Malaysia is looking to become the hub of artificial intelligence (AI) in Southeast Asia, but today Google DeepMind announced that they have chosen Singapore as the location to open their research lab for the Asia Pacific region. Singapore was chosen because of the government's support through the National AI Strategy 2.0 and Smart Nation 2.0, making it an ideal hub to expand the DeepMind site.
Today's announcement is part of Google's efforts to expand the Asia-Pacific ecosystem, with the Google DeepMind APAC team having more than doubled in size over the past year. In Singapore, Google has been collaborating with local agencies.
Among the efforts has been the use of AlphaFold by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and the National Institute of Neuroscience to find links between immunology and Parkinson's disease. In addition, they have also supported the development of the SEA-LION public language model that supports multiple Southeast Asian languages and provided free access for a year to Gemini Pro to Singaporean students.
Google is committed to ensuring that the benefits of AI are realized across APAC. Through this new AI research lab, they will continue to collaborate with partners so that AI can meet the needs and reflect the culture of more than half of the world's population living in APAC.
