THE governance of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is currently a hot topic. The Singapore government has recently released a revised AI Strategy (2.0) to boost the country’s collective economic and social potential. The Strategy identifies data as a significant factor in encouraging community knowledge and participation with confidence in AI expansion. It equally emphasises the importance of trust and empowerment as well as accuracy, which is largely a matter of data, not just technology.

These trends in governing AI are reflected in international regulatory developments currently in preparation. Towards the end of 2023, the EU reached an in-principle agreement on a comprehensive regulation concerning AI. This came mere weeks after several states unexpectedly splintered off from the main discussions, backing “mandatory self-regulation through codes of conduct” for advanced AI foundation models.

Across the Pacific Ocean, US senators have introduced a bill for AI regulation that intends to balance accountability and innovation. The UK is also preparing an AI (Regulation) Bill informed by principles such as safety, security, transparency, fairness, accountability and governance, as well as contestability and redress. At the same time, the UK Bill foresees meaningful and long-term public engagement about the opportunities and risks presented by AI, based on frameworks that will also be selected following public consultation.

One observation is that recent discussions of AI governance have become less reliant on consensus and voluntary compliance, opting for more interventionist regulation. Another is that, with the exception of the UK Bill, the fundamental of citizen involvement is perhaps not always fleshed out as emphatically as we would argue it should.

Our analysis of the governance challenges of public and private data sharing in smart cities (a key matter and context for the deployment of AI) suggests that the citizens – who provide the data smart cities run on – should not be absent from those governance agendas. Bottom-up approaches based on the inclusion and empowerment of these “smart” citizens (and therefore users of the AI technologies) may well be the missing ingredient in building trusted and responsible AI governance systems.

In that spirit, in our upcoming research report that addresses the governance challenges involved in citizen data sharing in smart cities, we reveal an original, trust- and empowerment-oriented, citizen-centric and bottom-up governance model for data sharing which embodies the abovementioned trends in AI governance.

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The research underlying the report was a joint initiative of the Centre for AI and Data Governance at the Singapore Management University (SMU) and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Rule of Law Programme Asia. The governance model is based on self-regulation with some compulsory elements, and its promise is catalysing trusted, safe relationships between smart city stakeholders, with the added benefit of greater data accuracy. Information openness is strongly emphasised as enabling participation as well as accountability.

The discussions on governing AI (and data sharing for AI) are likely to continue for some time. But against the backdrop of the high-pressure global AI race and a rising tally of abusive use cases, there is concern that respect for the users of these technologies might fall by the wayside. As we drown in an ocean of non-consensual uses of our data such as for training of generative AI models, and as researchers reportedly make headway towards discovering general AI – meaning AI that will outsmart humans – it is all the more important for these discussions to make space for public participation.

Dr Berenika Drazewska is a research affiliate at the Centre for AI and Data Governance (CAIDG), SMU and a member of the Singapore branch of the International Law Association (ILA). Prof Mark Findlay most recently served as a professorial research fellow at CAIDG SMU. He is an honorary senior fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) and an honorary professorial fellow at Edinburgh Law School.

This commentary draws from their research on smart city and data governance concluded in December 2023 at the CAIDG.