Many governments in the Asia Pacific region are racing to develop their own regulatory frameworks for promoting, integrating, and governing Artificial Intelligence (AI). The resulting fragmentation of regulatory standards will present significant operational and compliance challenges for firms focused on AI and AI-adjacent businesses, including digital services. So far, there are two main schools of thought: a more pro-innovation approach to AI as some governments—Japan and Singapore, for example—bet on AI's economic benefits, while others are more concerned about cybersecurity issues (as part of their broader national security concerns), and therefore prefer tighter control of AI development.

George Chen, Yale World Fellow '14—with his first-hand experience in dealing with various digital policy issues in the APAC region for some of the world's most important internet and AI companies—will give a brief history of AI development and then explore why there is no "one size fits all" regulatory model for the diverse and vast APAC region (unlike the European Union AI Act for the EU, a single internal market). This talk will also focus on how China and the U.S. will compete against each other beyond just AI technologies as the two are set to clash on how to set international standards on AI through the UN networks and other channels.