PLUS: China broadens cryptocurrency crackdown; Australian facial recognition privacy revisited; Singapore debuts electric VTOL; and more!
ASIA IN BRIEF The Commissioner of Police in the Indian city of Hyderabad, population 11 million, has called for AI agents to be issued with identity cards – or at least their digital equivalent.
In a lengthy post on X, commissioner V.C. Sajjanar noted “Autonomous robot agents have entered highly critical sectors such as banks, hospitals, and power grids. However, with these digital agents performing tasks independently without human intervention, there is widespread concern that we are at risk of losing control over them.”
Sajjanar worries that agents can make mistakes and also raised “a threat of cybercriminals hijacking the behavior of these agents and forcing them to commit wrongdoings.”
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He therefore suggests every AI agent “must have a precise 'Digital Identity.'”
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“Just as a human has an ID card in an organization, these software agents must also have identification. Which agent opened which file? When did it make changes? To whom did it send information? Every such movement must be recorded (Logging). Because of this, if an accident happens by mistake, we can immediately identify which agent caused it and rectify the issue.”
China cracks down on stablecoins, tokenization
The People’s Bank of China last week strengthened its ban on cryptocurrency, and tried to extend its ruling across borders.
The central bank issued a Notice on Further Preventing and Handling Risks Related to Virtual Currencies that re-iterates Beijing does not consider cryptocurrencies a legal means of exchange. The new Notice adds two more rules.
One regulates “tokenization of real-world assets,” the practice of using digital certificates to allow fractional ownership of assets by issuing tokens. That practice is now illegal in most applications, and heavily regulated in the few permitted uses.
The other new rule bans issuance of stablecoins tied to China’s currency. Beijing will have little trouble making that stick at home, but there’s little China’s government can do if foreign entities choose to create a stablecoin tied to the Yuan.
Hardware facial recognition privacy ruling overruled
Australian hardware chain Bunnings has successfully challenged a decision it violated shoppers’ privacy by using facial recognition without permission in its stores.
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Readers may remember that the retailer justified use of facial recognition on grounds that it wanted to detect a small number of people known to have acted violently in its stores or to be associated with organized crime. The company claimed it processed images it captured in 0.00417 seconds, and deleted most at the end of that period, so shoppers’ privacy was preserved.
Those arguments prevailed last week in a tribunal decision that found the retailer’s use of facial recognition was reasonable given the risks it faced and the security measures implemented to protect shoppers.
However, the hardware barn was also found to breach some of Australia’s privacy principles and told to stop that.
Huge if true: India/China payments link rumored
Reuters last week reported talks have taken place between Ant Group and Indian authorities about linking their Alipay and UPI payment systems.
If the report is correct and the talks succeed, it will mean two payment schemes with over 1.5 billion combined users become interoperable. Such an arrangement would also represent a substantial thawing of China-India relations.
Electric VTOL hovers into view
Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University last week showed off the island nation’s first locally designed and built full-sized aircraft, an advanced electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) technology demonstrator.
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The craft has eight rotors and can take off and land vertically “from any confined space” that can accommodate its eight-meter wingspan.
Professor Lam Khin Yong, NTU’s Vice President for industry, said the demonstrator shows electric aircraft of this sort have “potential to support future intracity and intercity mobility, particularly in Asia’s densely populated cities, where safe and well-designed aircraft will be critical for the movement of people and cargo.”
Singapore datacenter buyout
Investment firm KKR, together with Singtel, last week decided to spend $5.1 billion to acquire the 82 percent of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres they did not already own.
KKR will own 75 percent of the business, leaving the remainder to Singtel.
ST Telemedia Global Data Centres currently operates over 100 datacenters with collective capacity of 2.3 gigawatts across 12 countries. The company has a pipeline of another 1.7 gigawatts under construction. ®