FROM the pioneering work of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage to the visionary Tim Berners-Lee, the UK has always been at the forefront of digital innovation. Even areas where our strengths are well established - such as our world-renowned creative industries - are being transformed, and kept at the cutting edge, by developments in technology, notably virtual reality and artificial intelligence, where we also boast particular strengths.

In the UK, in Singapore and across the world, digital technology is transforming our way of life. And since one of the great benefits of digital is the ease with which it connects us all, we can now see better and more clearly than ever before how we are similarly affected by the pace of change. As we think of the pace of change today, new technology such as artificial intelligence means that today we face the slowest pace of change we will see in the rest of our lives. It's only going to get faster.

And for all its amazing innovation, new technology always brings risks, especially when the pace of change outstrips our ability to agree new rules of engagement. So the central challenge we now face is how to harness the power of emerging technology so it works always in our favour, always to improve the quality of people's lives, and that where it poses dangers we mitigate against them.