'Minister' of digitilisation makes the Netherlands look utterly ridiculous in Asia

'Be curious, not judgmental.' That's the message of my favorite show Ted Lasso. Mindful of that credo, I attended the Asia Tech Summit in Singapore this week, followed the launch of the Apple Vision Pro and tried to get to the bottom of the lawsuit filed by U.S. authorities against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase. Unfortunately, things already went wrong during the first hour of the Asia Tech Summit, in which Dutch state secretary Van Huffelen (because that is her real title, basically a deputy minister) was overcome by an overdose of unfounded self-confidence. 

The Asia Tech Summit is of particular interest because it brings together business and government institutions, with the idea that both sides develop an understanding and seek common ground. Singapore Minister for Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong provided the kickoff, after which Kaja Kallas (Estonia's first female prime minister) and Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand's youngest ever prime minister) paved the way for the first panel, on the opportunities and threats of AI. In this, Dutch state secretary Van Huffelen participated, along with the president of Microsoft Asia and Nvidia's board member who is responsible for AI partnerships.

As the only other Dutch speaker, I was interested in Ms. Van Huffelen, and Google taught me that she had a typical resume for a Dutch public official: been an alderman (sustainability, in Rotterdam), director of a semi-governmental body (public transport GVB, in Amsterdam) and as state secretary for Finance, she had inherited the Dutch Childcare Benefits Scandal, about which it is difficult to judge from a distance how adequately she had handled this extremely painful dossier.

Nothing wrong with that, I thought, in the spirit of Ted Lasso, stay positive! After all, with the childcare benefits scandal still in the back of her mind, hopefully she had taken a ride in Singapore on the phenomenal MRT (clean, fast, cheap and safe, nothing like the GVB subways Van Huffelen managed) and would surely exercise some humility and modesty? This is what I expected and hoped for, but nothing could be further from the truth. The secretary, who for incomprehensible reasons is presents herself abroad as Minister of Kingdom Relations and Digitalization, came out swinging almost from the start.

Strategic action plan for AI from 2019?

For those with a strong stomach, the entire panel can be watched back here, but the gist is that Van Huffelen sees mostly threats in AI and noted disappointment at the very beginning of the session, that nothing more has been heard of the idea of stopping AI development for six months. This is especially strange, since the Dutch cabinet produced a policy paper on AI as early as 2019 under State Secretary Keijzer of Economic Affairs that mostly sang the praises of AI. Participating in that cabinet was D66, Van Huffelen's party, and she even joined it as a state secretary of Finance in 2020. There is a NL AI Coalition (NL AIC), in which government, business and knowledge institutions work together, and there is an AINed foundation that can spend no less than 204.5 million Euro of government money to stimulate AI in the Netherlands. (I like the very specific 0.5 million: not 200 million, not 205 million, but 204.5 million Euro.)

Van Huffelen didn't say a word about this, pretending that AI is viewed exclusively with a critical eye in the Netherlands. Her substantive contribution can be summarized as a series of clichés that the citizen must come first (wow) and should not be forgotten (amazing) and that there is more to life than making a profit; she must have learned that from the tens of thousands of victims of the Childcare Benefits Scandal.

For me, the moment at the beginning was crucial, when it became clear that Van Huffelen is either particularly ignorant or particularly underhanded. After her performance, I would not rule out a combination of the two. After 1 minute 50, Van Huffelen literally said:

"We have seen loads of problems in AI, I have seen that in my country, even the government using AI, that came out and turned out to be very biased." 

To dismiss the Childcare Benefits Scandal, which ruined the lives of tens of thousands of people, in which over 2,000 children were placed out of their homes and on which the cabinet fell in which Van Huffelen was, by the way, responsible for this dossier herself; to blame this gigantic disaster on AI, is downright disgraceful.

Therefore, this brief refresher for Ms. Van Huffelen, who seems to have no active memory of the Childcare Benefits Scandal:

• until 2019, dual nationality was a selection rule for officials in the Tax Authority. That is a policy decision made by *people*. These victims were extra checked, for years, without knowing it, and could not appeal the inclusion in this group of extra checked people. This was Kafka for anyone with a foreign last name.
• The Dutch Data Protection Authority concluded that the processing by the Tax Authority was "unlawful, discriminatory and therefore improper" which resulted in a serious violation. So: the Dutch Tax Authority itself violated Dutch law. (It is therefore downright bizarre that as recently as January 17 of this year, this article was published on the Tax Administration's site, reporting that everything went perfectly by the book.)
• The bureaucratic top of the Tax Authority stopped benefits from people even though they knew they were entitled to them. Up to the highest level, it was decided to continue this unlawful approach for years.
• Tax Administration officials demanded punishment for their executives, but none were punished.

The Childcare Benefits Scandal is an accumulation of wrong and evil policy instructions. It has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with AI. Because AI is about machine learning, computer programs that get smarter as more data is added to them. Whether the Childcare Benefits Scandal was partly due to institutional racism or racial profiling I leave to sociologists and activists, but in any case it was "just" the work of incompetent and scummy people.

Ms. Van Huffelen apparently wanted to score with party colleagues tens of thousands of miles away. Perhaps the next D66 newsletter will contain a glowing passage about how their member lectured the big bad Microsoft. In any case, it will be bonus points in certain circles if Van Huffelen aspires to a job in Brussels and wants to further profile herself as a fighter for civil rights against tech capitalism. Because raising her profile is definitely what she wanted to do in Singapore.

Construction Worker Yellow

Each speaker received a description of the dress code for the event: "business casual (for gentlemen: suit, no tie)." I don't know what her description said, but surely not "Construction Worker Yellow". Van Huffelen's yellow dress and, by Asian standards, her particularly brash appearance stood out more than the substance of her contribution.

If someone in Asia makes a comment on a panel with which you disagree, you don't say, especially as a representative of a country, 'that is not true.' Then you say, for example, 'I have a different viewpoint.' Or: 'another way of looking at this, is xyz'. In the audience, people wondered aloud whether Van Huffelen was wearing a beach dress and whether she had confused her islands, because 'the yellow of Cory Aquino was in the Philippines, not Singapore.' An ill-mannered Dame Edna (not my words, but those used by Holland's largest newspaper De Telegraaf to describe Van Huffelen) ist not what you want to portray as the Netherlands in one of the largest world markets. Because make no mistake: while Singapore itself may be a small island nation, it is also the gateway to a gigantic market in South East Asia and a stepping stone to China.

AI Verify Foundation

The most embarrassing moment, although I wonder if Ms. Van Huffelen caught it, was when later in the day a real minister, Josephine Teo, Singapore Minister of Communications and Information, announced the creation of the AI Verify Foundation. Not a policy paper without clear goals, but a foundation in which business and government jointly establish tests that companies and governments worldwide can use to test AI applications. Teo emphasized that AI is so important especially for small countries like Singapore because it can increase a country's efficiency and production without adding additional human labor. Spot on.

Quantum computing near, threatens cryptography

There were more interesting announcements at the Asian Tech Summit. First, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat reported the creation of the National Quantum-Safe Network Plus (NQSN+). That's a mouthful and requires some explanation, the site says:

' The National Quantum-Safe Network (NQSN) aims to establish a nationwide platform and a field-deployed testbed for a systematic construction of quantum-safe communication technologies, by evaluating its security and demonstrating the integration of quantum-safe applications, best practices, and use cases. Our main goal is to deploy commercial quantum-safe technologies for trials with government agencies and private companies; to conduct in-depth evaluation of security systems; and to develop guidelines to support companies in adopting such technologies.'

Singapore aims to secure the crucial banking sector for the long term, hence the establishment of this quantum-secure network. Indeed, the importance of quantum computing will grow rapidly in the coming years. The most fascinating moment during the panel I participated in, on the future of Web 3.0, was when IBM Fellow Ray Harishankar explained (starting at 25.30) why quantum computing is crossing the path of the modern Internet and will be able to retroactively crack current cryptography.

Harishankar expects that between 2030 and 2035 quantum computers will become available for specific applications. His message is as simple as it is ominous: to be ready for quantum computing in 2030, organizations must get their cryptography in order now because soon, no password will be safe.

Singapore is collaborating on security and standardization with South Korea, which announced last month that it is investing as much as $2.6 billion dollars in research into quantum technology.

Apple Vision Pro a better device than expected, but for what?

Apple finally announced the Apple Vision Pro, the first step toward a new form of computing. Marques Brownlee explained in this particularly excellent video what the Vision Pro excels at and where the challenges lie for Apple. I was surprised that the introductory price is still $500 higher than expected: $3499 is not exactly consumer friendly pricing. For that high price, though, the Vision Pro is packed with high-quality sensors.

As an Apple fanboy, I was pleasantly surprised by the all-new interface: no more keyboard and mouse, but fine-tuned eye-tracking. Look at something and the Vision Pro sees it. Blinking becomes the new buying ;-) Even though it will probably take a decade before Apple headsets generate a significant  share (more than 10%) of Apple's revenue, it's great to see that Apple is finally trying something big and difficult again and not spending billions on stock buybacks.

Zuckerberg responds

Mark Zuckerberg was smart enough to take extensive time (nearly 3 hours!) to respond to Lex Fridman right after Apple's announcement. He had a strong argument that the Apple Vision Pro seems to be made for solitary use and not for communication with others. That indeed seems to be a next step for the Apple Vision Pro and its successors, as users of the iPhone but even the Apple Watch use their devices to communicate, in the case of the Apple Watch primarily as a recipient.

The complete integration of the Apple ecosystem between Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch and Vision Pro will be fascinating to follow. Over the next few years, it will be interesting to see what applications Apple develops to try to make the Vision Pro a mass-market product. I remain convinced that the biggest obstacle will be getting women excited about putting on a device that messes up their hair and makeup. For us balding men, there is no escape.

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg himself has the greatest possible difficulty motivating and enthusing his people. The Washington Post reported that even before the latest round of layoffs in May, which brought the total number of layoffs at Meta to as many as 21,000 jobs, confidence in his leadership among staff had fallen to 26%.

Notable links:

First, two reading tips for any person interested in AI; and for "Minister" Van Huffelen:

• Why AI will save the world. Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, particularly successful as an investor this century, explains very well why AI has mostly positive aspects.
• Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI has hacked the operating system of human civilization. AI will therefore change the course of human history, says the historian and philosopher. (Unfortunately only after registration) As is often the case, I don't know if Harari is entirely right, but his thinking is always original and his narrative style reads delightfully.

Other interesting links:

• Interesting video in which Twitter founder Ev Williams talks about how he feels about Twitter under Elon Musk. An interview that gives the impression that the demise of his brainchild really hurts him. 
• Entrepreneur and investor Auren Hoffman discovers that Midjourney has a strong gender and racial bias. The AI-generated photos of almost all smart people are male.
• It's not until 2028, SAS says, but you better get there fast: book the first electric flight.

Spotlight 9: the SEC targets crypto exchanges

 It was a rather boring week in the stock markets, with the old school S&P 500 outperforming the tech funds. All the negativity about Bitcoin was apparently already priced in, as BTC barely dropped amid all the uproar over the announcement that the SEC has filed suit against Binance. This comes as no surprise. Last year, I wrote about Binance's lack of commitment to fighting money laundering.

More surprising is the suit against Coinbase, which is accused of selling securities without having the necessary licenses. The SEC thus takes the position that at least some cryptocurrencies that Coinbase (and many other exchanges) accommodate trading in, should be considered securities. As a result, Robinhood will delist Solana, Cardano and Polygon.

At the same time, it is not conclusively established that the SEC has the authority to pursue charges when elected representatives are preparing legislation in the area in which the SEC is currently starting cases. Former Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Casey, now the editorial boss at Coindesk, wrote a comprehensive analysis of the legal battle unfolding in the U.S. at the intersection of crypto and politics.

The shadow cast over the crypto sector by the FTX debacle is having global repercussions. Even in Singapore, where unlike the Netherlands, failures do have consequences. Employees of sovereign wealth fund Temasek who invested in FTX and lost $275 million dollars (still less than one percent of invested assets) saw their salaries cut.

How much was not disclosed, but although investigations showed that all procedures had been followed, the fraud and theft by Bankman-Fried and associates, impacted the Singapore sovereign wealth fund managers in the end. I find this a rather heavy punishment, because Bankman-Fried just stole from his investors and customers and it is difficult to protect yourself from such criminal behavior. But maybe I am too Dutch and too used to incompetent souls stumbling from one cabinet to the next. It is easier to watch Ted Lasso, than to follow his motto in real life. It's hard to be curious and not judgmental.