To do so, countries need to build trust by continuing to combat fraud and cyber attacks to reduce the risks to users making digital transactions.
Countries should also work towards a common ground for the management of data, which will make it easier for them to collaborate and reduce costs for businesses, said Mr Wong.
He also said a collective international approach is needed to deal with the issues AI raises.
While AI promises to shake up the digital economy with great potential, there remain serious concerns, especially in the biases that AI can exhibit in its decision-making, said Mr Wong.
“As AI becomes more intimate and human-like, what is to stop it from being used to perpetuate falsehoods in society, commit hard-to-detect scams, and undertake foreign influence operations?” he said, adding that these are the issues regulators, businesses and society will need to tackle.
Mr Wong said: “No country can deal with all these issues alone. Only by coming together, and drawing on our collective wisdom and experiences, can we hope to succeed.”
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who was one of the speakers at the conference, said that a shared digital space can be achieved only through collaboration and cyber security.
The European nation, which is among the most digitally advanced economies, nearly doubled its annual cyber-security budget in 2022, said Ms Kallas, who urged other countries to consider doing likewise amid a rapidly changing security climate.
She cited Estonia’s collaboration with Ukraine to develop administrative online services since 2012, which has paved the way for Ukraine to continue delivering online services even during war.
Estonia is now learning from Ukraine’s digital experience, piloting a government app based on Ukrainian public service portal Diia, which Ms Kallas said is another example of how collaboration can help countries meet their common goals.
In a recorded keynote address, former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern said that tech innovations move fast and come with risks, especially in AI, with even the developers of these tools having cautioned against their perils.
While communities around the world search for ways to govern the deployment of AI tools, it is difficult to do so because the technology is not well understood, she said.
“I encourage you to look towards flexible collaborative solutions,” she said, citing how the authorities and companies worked together to block the circulation of a live-streamed terror attack in Christchurch in 2019, and later sparked an effort to weed out extremist content online.
Ms Ardern added that such collaboration is key to enabling the industry to solve issues in an uncertain environment, including the setting up of guard rails and operating principles in AI.
Correction note: A previous version of the story stated that DPM Lawrence Wong said that Singapore’s digital economy has grown more than 10 per cent on average in each of the last five years. He did not say this. We are sorry for the error.
