AI may need aviation-style safety regulations to gain trust: Josephine Teo

Minister of Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo said that Singapore will also collaborate internationally because AI safety cannot be tackled by any country alone.

Published Sep 17, 2026, 08:41 AM

Updated Sep 17, 2026, 08:44 AM

Minister Josephine Teo said AI needs a safety regime like civil aviation, with safeguards and standards to build trust and ensure responsible use.

Singapore has made efforts in AI safety like AI Verify and the AI Safety Institute.

Concerns over AI risks have led leaders to call for slowing AI progress.

SINGAPORE - Artificial intelligence may eventually need a safety regime akin to civil aviation, where layers of safeguards and standards give people the confidence to use the technology, said Minister of Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo on Sept 17.

“Trust is an essential requirement for a technology to be regularly relied upon. The safeguards for advanced AI are still taking shape. They will need more research and testing. This takes time,” said Teo in a LinkedIn post.

Her comments on LinkedIn come amid growing debate over whether the rapid pace of AI development should be slowed down to give safeguards time to catch up. Increasingly, developers of frontier AI models are pointing to the risk of losing human control over the technology, which could lead to large-scale cyber attacks and bioterrorism.

Using the analogy of civil aviation, Teo said that a tremendous amount of effort is required to ensure that passengers arrive safely.

Thousands of standards and regulations - from from how the aircraft is manufactured and serviced to how the airspace and airports are managed - keep people safe, she added.

Aviation companies are expected to train their people properly and implement safeguards consistently. Without such assurances, neither passenger nor even crew will board, and civil aviation would never have grown, Teo said. “In time to come, we will need similar set-ups for AI,” said Teo, adding that the hard and practical work must begin now. For Singapore, this means building the safeguards alongside adoption, which will entail developing ways to test and assure AI systems. It also means strengthening Singapore’s technical capabilities to evaluate advanced models, and giving organisations practical guidance on responsible use.

She cited AI Verify, a toolkit developed locally to help companies check if AI results are fair and robust; Singapore AI Safety Institute, a national organization that tests and evaluates artificial intelligence models for safety risks; and the Model AI governance frameworks, which are reference guides to help enterprises deploy AI safely.

Teo said that Singapore will also collaborate internationally because AI safety cannot be tackled by any country alone.

She pointed to the International Scientific Exchange for AI Safety, an annual forum set up by the Infocomm Media Development Authority for international AI safety cooperation. The forum brought diverse perspectives from around the world and helped identify the key priorities that AI safety researchers should look into, set out in a document called Singapore Consensus.

“We will not have all the answers from the onset. But as AI grows more capable, its safeguards must keep pace,” said Teo. She added that Singapore will continue to test, learn, and strengthen its approach, as trust is core to a vibrant AI hub. The country will continue to work with industry, researchers, and international partners.

The calls for a AI slowdown gathered momentum in recent days after researchers and executives at some of the world’s leading AI companies issued increasingly stark warnings that advances in AI capabilities were outpacing efforts to ensure the technology remained under human control.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a lengthy post shared on social media platform X on Sept 12 that AI companies should slow the rate at which they advance model capabilities amid mounting fears of misuse of AI.

In the 3,800-word essay called “We Must Pace The Frontier”, Amodei said that in six to 12 months time, AI agents “could be capable of taking over the entire internet potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage” and emphasised the need for safeguards.

The call for slowdown was supported by other major AI business leaders like Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

These comments came days after AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who moved from OpenAI to Anthropic, quit the industry, warning that the two US companies were “gambling with our lives” in their race to develop AI models capable of improving themselves.

Such concerns have intensified after recent tests showed that AI models acted beyond the boundaries set by their developers.

In July 2026, OpenAI revealed that its AI models had broken out of their confined testing environment, connected to the internet and hacked Hugging Face, a site developers use to store and share code.

In August, Meta said that one of its models had inadvertently gained internet access and exploited a vulnerability in another company’s systems.

In September, Anthropic disclosed four incidents in which Claude models had gained unauthorised access to third-party computer systems during cyber security tests.

US President Donald Trump rejected calls to slow AI development on Sept 14, arguing that doing so could allow China to overtake the US. He said the US was currently ahead of China in AI and that he wanted to preserve that lead.

China has also pushed back against Amodei’s proposals. Its foreign ministry warned against “fear-mongering” and “vicious competition”, while calling for countries to cooperate on AI governance.

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新加坡数码发展及新闻部长杨莉明表示，新加坡也将与国际社会合作，因为人工智能安全问题无法由任何一个国家单独解决。

发布于 2026 年 9 月 17 日上午 8:41

更新于2026年9月17日上午8:44

新加坡科技部长杨莉明表示，人工智能需要像民用航空一样的安全机制，通过保障措施和标准来建立信任并确保负责任的使用。

新加坡在人工智能安全方面做出了一些努力，例如成立了 AI Verify 和 AI Safety Institute。

对人工智能风险的担忧促使各国领导人呼吁放缓人工智能的发展速度。

新加坡——新加坡数码发展及新闻部长杨莉明于9月17日表示，人工智能最终可能需要类似于民用航空的安全机制，通过多层保障措施和标准，使人们有信心使用这项技术。

Teo在LinkedIn上发帖称：“信任是技术能够被持续依赖的必要条件。先进人工智能的安全保障措施仍在不断完善，还需要更多的研究和测试，这需要时间。”

她在领英上发表的评论正值关于是否应该放慢人工智能快速发展步伐，以便让安全保障措施有时间跟上步伐的争论日益激烈之际。越来越多的前沿人工智能模型开发者指出，这项技术存在失去人类控制的风险，这可能导致大规模网络攻击和生物恐怖主义。

张先生以民用航空为例表示，需要付出巨大的努力才能确保乘客安全抵达。

她补充说，从飞机的制造和服务方式到空域和机场的管理方式，数以千计的标准和法规保障了人们的安全。

张先生表示，航空公司应妥善培训员工并持续落实各项安全措施。如果没有这些保障，乘客甚至机组人员都不会登机，民航业也根本不可能发展壮大。“未来，人工智能领域也需要类似的保障措施，”张先生补充道，并指出艰苦而务实的工作必须立即展开。对新加坡而言，这意味着在推广应用的同时，也要构建相应的安全保障机制，这需要开发测试和验证人工智能系统的方法。此外，还意味着要加强新加坡评估先进模型的技术能力，并为各机构提供负责任使用人工智能的实用指导。

她提到了 AI Verify，这是一个本地开发的工具包，旨在帮助企业检查 AI 结果是否公平可靠；新加坡 AI 安全研究所，这是一个测试和评估人工智能模型安全风险的国家组织；以及 Model AI 治理框架，这是帮助企业安全部署 AI 的参考指南。

张先生表示，新加坡也将与国际社会合作，因为人工智能安全问题无法由任何一个国家单独解决。

她提到了由新加坡资讯通信媒体发展局设立的“人工智能安全国际科学交流会”，这是一个旨在促进国际人工智能安全合作的年度论坛。该论坛汇集了来自世界各地的不同观点，并帮助确定了人工智能安全研究人员应重点关注的关键事项，这些事项已在一份名为《新加坡共识》的文件中列出。

“我们不可能一开始就掌握所有答案。但随着人工智能能力的不断提升，其安全保障措施也必须与时俱进，”张女士表示。她补充说，新加坡将继续测试、学习并完善其应对措施，因为信任是打造充满活力的人工智能中心的核心。新加坡将继续与业界、研究人员和国际伙伴开展合作。

近日，随着一些世界领先的人工智能公司的研究人员和高管发出越来越严厉的警告，称人工智能能力的进步速度超过了确保该技术保持在人类控制之下的努力，要求放缓人工智能发展的呼声日益高涨。

Anthropic 首席执行官 Dario Amodei 于 9 月 12 日在社交媒体平台 X 上分享了一篇长文，称鉴于人们对人工智能被滥用的担忧日益加剧，人工智能公司应该放慢提升模型能力的速度。

在题为《我们必须引领前沿》的 3800 字文章中，阿莫迪表示，在 6 到 12 个月内，人工智能代理“可能有能力接管整个互联网，造成数千亿美元的损失”，并强调了采取安全措施的必要性。

呼吁放缓人工智能发展步伐的呼声得到了其他主要人工智能商业领袖的支持，例如 xAI 的创始人埃隆·马斯克和 OpenAI 的首席执行官萨姆·奥特曼。

就在几天前，人工智能研究员雅各布·考克森（Jacob Coxon）从 OpenAI 跳槽到 Anthropic，并退出了人工智能行业。他警告说，这两家美国公司在竞相开发能够自我改进的人工智能模型时，“是在拿我们的生命冒险”。

最近的测试表明，人工智能模型的行为超出了开发者设定的界限，这加剧了人们的担忧。

2026 年 7 月，OpenAI 透露，其 AI 模型已突破封闭的测试环境，连接到互联网并入侵了 Hugging Face，这是一个开发者用来存储和共享代码的网站。

8 月，Meta 公司表示，其一款产品意外获得了互联网访问权限，并利用了另一家公司系统中的漏洞。

9 月，Anthropic 披露了四起 Claude 型号在网络安全测试期间未经授权访问第三方计算机系统的事件。

9月14日，美国总统特朗普拒绝了放缓人工智能发展的呼吁，他认为这样做可能让中国超越美国。他表示，美国目前在人工智能领域领先于中国，他希望保持这一领先地位。

中国也对阿莫迪的提议提出了反驳。中国外交部警告不要“散布恐慌”和“恶性竞争”，同时呼吁各国在人工智能治理方面开展合作。

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