Auditing AI for Whom? A Community-Centric Approach to Rebuilding Public Trust in Singapore
Wenxi Zhang, Sharanya Shanmugam, Jason G Allen, Willow Wong, Olivia Xu
Singapore Management University Centre for Digital Law, 2024
This report offers a unique Asian/Singaporean perspective to the regulation of AI technologies. In contrast to Western-centric regulatory frameworks that tend to focus on individual rights and freedoms, this paper suggests that Asian cultures prioritise collective understandings of benefit and harm, which supports the implementation of community-centric AI audits as a way to promote trust building in a smart city. This report also aims to present the findings from a roundtable discussion exploring the feasibility of community-centric AI audits conducted with experts in Singapore that work closely with AI technologies, AI governance or auditing. While a range of practical considerations and potential challenges, such as the difficulties of promoting the audit of technologies to local tech companies, was raised, there ultimately remains optimism about the endeavour.