Want to kick-start innovation? Launch a public research cloud

Policymakers should open access to data, AI to encourage a broader range of competitors

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There are two schools of thought about the market impact of Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI), although, paradoxically, both may be simultaneously true.

The first says that only the biggest tech companies know how to swim in the deep end of AI. To build state-of-the-art models requires massive amounts of data, computational power, expertise and capital. Only the likes of Google and Microsoft in the US and Alibaba and Tencent in China can ever hope to make a splash.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 20, 2020, with the headline Want to kick-start innovation? Launch a public research cloud. Subscribe