With the rapid development of AI technology, trust in the development and deployment of AI is integral to encouraging its use and adoption. We believe that it is imperative for ASEAN to cultivate trust in the use of AI to realise the full benefit of AI to the regional economy.

To this end, Singapore led the development of the ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics, which serves as a practical guide for organisations in the region that wish to design, develop, and deploy traditional AI technologies in commercial and non-military or dual use applications. The Guide seeks to establish common principles for trustworthy AI and suggest best practices for how to implement trustworthy AI in ASEAN. It includes recommendations on national-level and regional-level initiatives that governments in the region can consider implementing. It also illustrates components of the Guide through use cases of organisations operating in ASEAN that have implemented AI governance measures. The project involved a comprehensive stakeholder consultation process with ASEAN Member States, Dialogue/Development Partners (e.g., US, China, EU, ITU), as well as industry.

Ultimately, the Guide is significant as ASEAN’s first and one of the world’s first regional guideline on AI governance. It represents ASEAN’s efforts at crystallising AI governance principles and governance practices relevant to and appropriate for ASEAN’s unique context and marks an important milestone in ASEAN’s progress on the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025, which envisions ASEAN as a leading digital community and economic bloc.

Moving forward, the Guide lays the groundwork for ASEAN’s future AI initiatives, which can build on the framework in this project to address topics such as the governance of generative AI.

https://asean.org/book/asean-guide-on-ai-governance-and-ethics/

• Asia and Pacific

• Youth
• Older persons
• Women
• The unemployed
• The poor
• Migrants
• Remote and rural communities

The ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics was developed for ASEAN, and take reference from the following:
• International frameworks such as: UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence; EU’s Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI; OECD’s Recommendation of the Council on Artificial Intelligence; OECD’s Catalogue of Tools & Metrics for Trustworthy AI; GPAI Data Governance Working Group's A Framework Paper for GPAI’s work on Data Governance; US NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework Playbook; China’s White Paper on Trustworthy AI; Japan METI’s Governance Guidelines for Implementation of AI Principles; and the UK AI Council’s AI Roadmap.
• Frameworks within ASEAN such as: Indonesia’s National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence; Malaysia’s National AI Roadmap 2021-2025; Singapore’s Model AI Governance Framework and Implementation and Self-Assessment Guide for Organisations; The Philippines’ National AI Strategy Roadmap 2021-2028; and Thailand’s AI Ethics Guidelines and National AI Strategy and Action Plan 2022-2027.
• Input from ASEAN member states, ADGSOM Dialogue/Development Partners and industry.

The seven guiding principles for the framework in the Guide are generally applicable across all AI systems. While the AI Governance Framework and recommendations in the Guide were developed in the ASEAN context, they can also be adapted for other economies with an interest in AI governance.

As mentioned, while the Guide is focused on traditional AI technology, the principles in the Guide are generally applicable across all AI systems.

Given the increasing use of AI, the Guide also contains national-level and regional-level recommendations that help governments in ASEAN prepare their people and companies to interact effectively with AI systems, such that they can be future-ready and optimise the use of AI in their professional and personal lives. For example, the national-level recommendation on “nurturing AI talent and upskilling the workforce” looks at how governments could collaborate with the private sector to determine the pool of future AI-trained graduates who will be needed to help their countries achieve longer term digital economy objectives.

With the emergence of generative AI, the Guide also describes new and unprecedented risks posed by generative AI, such as deepfakes. A key regional-level recommendation in the Guide is adapting the Guide to address governance of generative AI. This lays the groundwork for the next phase of ASEAN’s AI governance work i.e., to build on the current framework in this project to develop governance guidelines for generative AI.

When Singapore/IMDA first started the project in 2022, we were aware that not every ASEAN member state has developed their own national AI strategy. However, with the rapid development of AI and the digital economy, we recognised that trust in the development and deployment of AI was integral to encouraging its use and adoption. We believed it was imperative for ASEAN to cultivate trust in the use of AI to realise the full benefit of AI to the regional economy. ASEAN member states without existing AI policies would also benefit from a regional framework as it would help them develop necessary regulatory policies in line with endorsed regional standards. Promoting the WSIS value of solidarity, we thus worked with ASEAN to develop the region’s first concerted approach on AI governance. The Guide illustrates the WSIS value of shared responsibility by providing guidelines and recommendations for a diverse range of individuals and organisations along the entire value chain, including AI developers and deployers, academic professionals, policymakers, and users. The Guide also explores how policymakers could facilitate and co-create with developers a shared responsibility framework to clarify the responsibilities of all parties in the AI system lifecycle, as well as the safeguards and measures they need to respectively undertake.