All change starts with an idea. A good idea can change the world forever. Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy recently hosted the
Festival of Ideas 2024 with the aim of sparking new dialogues, exchanging ideas and paving a path to good governance — in Singapore, the region, and beyond. Comprising 130 speakers and 42 programs, here are some of the notable highlights from the 5-day festival.
Dean and Li Ka Shing Professor Danny Quah, Economics, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at The China Shock at the End of History
On what nations can do as the world’s two biggest economies compete fiercely against one another:
“The big China shock was this up and then down. Question is, what do we do going forward? The goal is obviously not to take sides. Each country — each great power — is just trying to do the best that they can. China wants to grow — and it should grow — to lift its people out of poverty; America doesn't want its people to feel insecure — and they shouldn't. We need to be able to come up with a way to triangulate that. So, the question for us in the rest of the world is — not to take sides because everyone is right — the question is ‘what's the smart thing to do?’”
Read
our coverage of this session and
another article on the three ways Professor Quah believes we can support the mutual growth and development of the USA and China.
Associate Professor Eduardo Araral, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
at The Relative Effects of AI on Democracies
On different models of voting around the world…
“All of the voting systems in the world are pre-AI. They were not designed to deal with vulnerabilities and all the risks they’re facing with AI. My call is we need to rethink these voting systems given that AI is here. [...] Politics is gladiatorial, right, so ethics will be thrown out the window in order to win power. [...] I'm hoping that countries will start to rethink their voting systems and make it less vulnerable to AI driven disinformation.”
Dr Jacob Rinck, Postdoctoral Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore at Narrating Development in Asia
On migration and development in Nepal…
“Since the mid 20th century, different development paradigms have come and gone, [...] but some fundamental narratives about what development should be, have endured. Development is supposed to attain a particular process, especially the transition away from agriculture and towards industrialisation and urbanisation. It’s also supposed to have a set of outcomes, and that’s not just poverty reduction [...] It’s about convergence with the global north. In other words, development is about the hope for catching up and ultimately for overcoming global inequality.”
Professor Tony Wong, Sustainable Development, Monash University at Lim Tiam Seng Lecture Series: Water as an Enabler of Sustainable Development
On how to build social resilience…
“Social resilience can only be harnessed based around awareness, knowledge, and empowerment. We need to have a community that understands the vulnerabilities and include them in co-designing policy and implementation of works. [...] We started with water, but it's really not just about water. Water is a great enabler to many discussions.”
Assistant Professor Xia Xing, Yale-NUS College at Social Protection and Early Childhood Development
On the breakdown of the adage "it takes a village to raise a child" and the challenges of not having readily available help from friends and family in urban settings...
“I’ve read about this in early childhood development literature in richer countries such as the US and Western Europe [...] that if there is an early childhood centre where you can set the child, while the mother’s going to work and the father’s going to work, most of the time it doesn’t hurt the child — as long as the quality of these early childhood centres are good enough. It’s usually not worse than the mother staying home, taking care of the children. [...]
In a lot of countries, even in the US, when we look at the low-income population, the quality of childcare provided by these nurseries are actually better than the mother’s, if the mother herself wasn't educated enough to know what to do or how to communicate with the child.
I'm optimistic on that front, in saying that as a society we have figured out ways in providing early childhood care [...] as long as we put enough resources in there, we know how to do it well enough so that it's as good as an educated mother providing care.”
Associate Professor Johan Sulaeman, Director of the Sustainable and Green Finance Institute, NUS; Dean's Chair and Associate Professor, NUS Business School
at Demystifying ESG Ratings: Accountability and Consumer Perceptions
On reporting preferences and disclosure…
“Typically, the [argument] against data availability is that it puts undue burden on companies. [...] To me, that’s a tradeoff that we need to understand. Making data available to the public versus what companies actually need to disclose for the public to make decisions. Because we cannot demand that all information is made available to us, we can only demand available material for our decisions. [...]
We need to make sure that companies are not being put through undue burden to report information that is unnecessary. So, it is on us to decide what is the information that is necessary for the society to make the right decisions. [...]
My concern is that companies are disclosing information, and we turn around and not report the information properly, not record the information properly — therefore we’re not using the information properly. We need to do better in terms of using the information, and companies need to be better in terms of reporting.”
Associate Professor Jolene Lin, Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law, NUS at Voluntary Environmental Action & The Role of Public Policy On the challenges and limitations of nature-based solutions...
“The REDD+ framework requires a lot of updating. A lot of the problems come from nature-based credits and if we look at the carbon markets, there’s just been too much hype over the potential for nature-based solutions. I don’t say that lightly because it’s actually very tragic. The potential for carbon markets to deliver climate finance in developing countries has often been with forestry in mind. But the real potential for forestry to deliver verifiable, accountable and high-integrity carbon credits is very challenging. At the heart of it, it is a legitimacy question. The legitimacy challenge comes from the fact that there is now a trust deficit in the market.”
Dr Janil Puthucheary, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI), Singapore at Asia Thinker Series: AI and Governance in a Time of Disinformation
On hallucinations and whether this might be what could otherwise be called imagination…
“Today, the way in which AI hallucinates is seen as a problem to be fixed. But at some point, you can have an AI where the sense of imagination and theory of mind suggests that that is a useful thing. In other words, they are drawing inferences, which the public then subsequently trusts. They are creating positions and synthesising knowledge in a way that we don't then say derisively is a hallucination but is a synthesis — which is then useful for us. Which speaks to that idea of imagination, a theory of mind. What could be better? Then you run the possibility of them finally closing the gap.”
Associate Professor Emi Kiyota, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and College of Design and Engineering at Population Ageing: Promoting Purposeful and Health Longevity of Older Adults
On creating programmes that are inclusive to elders…
“Older people want to be contributors. In senior centers, we’re trying to be there, to help them. But older people also want to help us — so how can we enable that? So, we took the concept of Ibasho — which is a place where you feel ‘at home’. How do we make that into spaces and programmes that can empower and include older people? [...] What we’re trying to do through ibasho is challenge prevalent — mostly negative — perceptions of ageing and empower older people to create physical spaces through the program where they can do something with the younger generation.”
This article is produced as part of a series in conjunction with
Festival of Ideas 2024.