AI Governance From Brussels to Beijing: George Chen on APAC’s Different Path скачать в хорошем качестве

AI Governance From Brussels to Beijing: George Chen on APAC’s Different Path

Most AI policy conversations still orbit around Washington and Brussels, but Asia-Pacific is already writing a very different rulebook. In this episode, I talk with George Chen, Digital Partner at The Asia Group and former Meta policy executive, about how AI is actually being governed, built, and deployed across APAC, China, and the global south. George traces his own path from journalism to big tech to advisory work, and uses that vantage point to explain why APAC is not “one market”—and why the EU analogy breaks down almost immediately. Countries like Japan, Korea, Singapore, and China are leaning into AI as a tool for economic recovery and industrial upgrading, often taking a much more pro-innovation, pro-growth stance than the EU’s more precautionary approach. At the same time, Southeast Asia is becoming the physical backbone of the AI build-out: Singapore as HQ and regulatory hub, with Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines hosting the data centers, power, and connectivity—along with all the local tensions that come with that. We also get into what “responsible AI” actually looks like inside a company. Beyond the buzzwords, George breaks it down to three pillars—security, safety, and privacy—and talks through how mature players like Microsoft or Meta build these into product design from day one, versus the reality for startups trying to ship fast with one lawyer and a single policy person supporting multiple markets. He also makes the case that fragmented regulation and the lack of international standards are becoming a real tax on innovation, especially outside the US and EU. Another big thread is the emerging US–China competition over AI governance itself. It’s no longer just about who has the best models or chips; it’s also about who exports their rules, norms, and defaults to the rest of the world. The US is pushing an “America-first” innovation and safety model to allies, while China is pitching AI as a kind of public good to the global south—combined with a more cost-efficient, top-down deployment model and very strict cyber and real-name rules at home. George argues this divergence is already shaping how content, deepfakes, and AI-generated media are treated in different jurisdictions. We talk about the local edge of Chinese models—why in places like Beijing, models such as DeepSeek can be more useful than ChatGPT or Gemini for everyday queries because they’re trained on more localized, timely data. From there, we zoom out into the new AI talent map: countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan trying to position themselves as low-cost AI talent hubs and “back offices” for global AI companies as coding gives way to prompting and applied ML. We close on a more philosophical note: should AI be built as a subordinate assistant or a true partner? George shares his uncertainty here, and we talk about what happens when we give AI more agency, emotional intelligence, and continuous workloads. At some point, the conversation shifts from safety checklists to ethics, culture, and even “digital colonialism”: whose values, whose norms, and whose worldview are encoded into the systems that end up mediating how we see the world. -- For more information on the podcast series, see here: https://aiproem.substack.com/p/launch... Feel free to get in touch: Instagram: graceshao_proem LinkedIn:   / gmzshao   Website: https://aiproem.substack.com/ Email: [email protected] Get access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5FHayFP... #Brussels #China #APAC #Meta #AISafety #AIpolicy #AIenergy #technology #Policy For more information on the podcast series, see here: https://aiproem.substack.com/p/launch... Feel free to get in touch: Instagram: graceshao_proem LinkedIn:   / gmzshao   Website: https://aiproem.substack.com/ Email: [email protected] Get access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5FHayFP... #verticalAI #datamoat #biotech #VC #venturecapital #artificialintelligence #deeptech #china #siliconvalley