Singapore is about to get a lot of publicity over the next few months as the country gets ready to house the world’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) hub.
Marvelstone Group is a Singapore-based private investment firm that has big plans for the future.
The company announced earlier this month that it intends to use the hub to develop AI-related intellectual property, organise community events, develop and grow ideas, and to help AI startups get off the ground.
The new AI hub would follow a similar design to that of Lattice80, another of Marvelstone’s creations.
This facility was launched last November and was designed to help speed up the growth of Singapore’s flourishing technology industry.
“There is a clear need for a big playground for startups, entrepreneurs and even corporates in the field of AI,” said president of Marvelstone Group, Joel Ko. “Considering the high interest and demand for AI globally, there are still relatively few places to test these new technologies.
Our goal is to build 100 AI startups a year and attract global AI talent to Singapore to incubate their own applications and collaborate with our local teams.”
Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) announced in May this year that it would be investing heavily in the field of AI over the next five years in a national program called AI.SG.
The aim of this program is to entice others to adopt the use of AI, not just in business, but in society too.
The country face major issues in terms of healthcare and AI could be integrated into some of the country’s healthcare systems to significantly improve this. NRF is confident that the program will strengthen the capabilities and relationships of corporate laboratories and startups.
The organisation will also enable access to AI.SG software tools and frameworks as well as high-computing resources and anonymised datasets.
Even though Singapore could well be home to the biggest AI hub as of next year, they’ve still got a way to go if they want to catch up with say the US for example who managed to secure around 66% of all external AI investments throughout the whole of 2016.
Second to that was China at a very modest 17%, according to a McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) study.
The same study also confirmed that the world’s leading tech giants were continuing with their big investment efforts in AI with an estimated $20 to $30 billion having been invested last year between them.
Original source Computer Weekly
