AI is a driving force in the region

MENTION artificial intelligence (AI) at a networking event, and you will get the conversation ball rolling. Everyone has a point to make about AI - it is a fad; much feared; or simply the future. Going by a latest report by Fleishman Hillard, there is a lot of positivity around AI's potential - nearly half of 2,000 respondents from the US and UK agree that the positives of AI outweigh the negatives. But AI has yet to deliver on expectations - only a third of respondents say that they have already seen the benefits, while 40 per cent have not seen a difference.

This week, Grab and the National University of Singapore (NUS) unveiled the Grab-NUS AI Lab, the latest in what has become a steady stream of AI initiatives to hit Singapore. The Lab, located at innovation 4.0 - a new building in NUS said to have the fastest Wi-Fi in town - is modest, but the collaboration between Singapore's largest unicorn and university should be anything but.

For a start, the Lab will focus on improving the efficiency and reliability of transportation on Grab's platform across South-east Asia. Next, the Lab will expand its focus to examine the larger transportation challenges facing cities in South-east Asia, such as congestion and liveability. It will leverage data from Grab's platform - three petabytes of data from the over two billion rides that Grab has facilitated since its 2012 founding - as well as data from NUS's other research units, and from Singapore's Land Transport Authority and taxi giant ComfortDelGro.