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Singapore’s AI Ambition: Expanding Semiconductor Capacity to Ride the Tech Wave

Singapore is expanding its semiconductor industry to attract tech giants and ride the AI wave, with top firms investing billions and innovative tactics driving growth.

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TL;DR:

  • Singapore is expanding its semiconductor manufacturing capacity by 11% to attract more AI and tech giants.
  • The semiconductor sector employs 35,000 people and contributes 20% to Singapore’s manufacturing output.
  • GlobalFoundries and other top firms are investing billions in Singapore’s wafer fabrication parks.
  • The industry is set to grow from US$600 billion to US$1 trillion, driving demand for chips.

Imagine scrolling through this article on your phone or computer. Did you know that a tiny chip powers these devices and millions of others? Many of these chips are made in Singapore, and the country is now gearing up to expand its chip-making capacity. Let’s dive into Singapore’s ambitious plans to ride the AI wave by boosting its semiconductor industry.

Singapore’s Semiconductor Industry: A Powerhouse

Singapore’s semiconductor sector is a massive contributor to its economy. It employs about 35,000 people and makes up almost 20% of the country’s manufacturing output. With manufacturing being Singapore’s largest industry, the semiconductor sector plays a pivotal role in its gross domestic product (GDP).

Currently, nine out of the top 15 semiconductor firms have operations in Singapore. These include giants like American chipmaker Micron and German wafer manufacturer Siltronic. These companies are clustered in four wafer fabrication parks that span an impressive 374 hectares—that’s more than 500 football fields!

Expanding Capacity to Attract Tech Giants

To attract more top semiconductor giants and ride the artificial intelligence wave, Singapore is preparing 11% more land in its wafer fabrication parks. This new plot, part of which is in the eastern region of Singapore, will be ready by the end of 2024. Companies setting up there will enjoy customised roads and new water piping, making the deal even sweeter.

Chipmaking is a delicate process that requires stable power and water supply for constant cooling. These plants cannot be near MRT stations or other heavy industries due to mini vibrations that could affect production. Singapore’s strategic planning ensures these conditions are met, making it an ideal location for semiconductor firms.

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GlobalFoundries: A Success Story

GlobalFoundries, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, has been in Singapore since 2010. It runs one of the largest wafer plants and can produce about 1.5 million 300mm wafers annually. Last year, the firm added 23,000 sqm—equivalent to about four football fields—of space to boost capacity amid a boom in demand.

Tan Yew Kong, senior vice president of GlobalFoundries, highlighted the crucial role of JTC, Singapore’s government industrial planner, in building their US$4 billion expanded fabrication plant. He emphasised Singapore’s 55-year history in the semiconductor industry and its ability to provide a robust network for materials and infrastructure.

“We are definitely here to stay, and looking at the market sentiment of regionalisation, friendshoring, all these approaches – definitely, having a location like Singapore to support the global footprint is a very necessary thing.”

  • Tan Yew Kong, Senior Vice President, GlobalFoundries

Friendshoring refers to manufacturing and sourcing from countries with similar geopolitical stances. With the industry set to almost double from US$600 billion to US$1 trillion, building a factory in advance is crucial.

Innovative Tactics to Stay Competitive

As competition within the region heats up, Singapore is adopting innovative tactics to attract business. The Jurong Innovation District, which houses advanced manufacturing, urban solutions, and engineering startups, is a prime example. This district offers complimentary services like F&B, retail, and even childcare services to create vibrant estates where businesses and people can grow.

“We hope by doing so, we create vibrant estates in which our businesses and people can grow, and that is very important to help grow future industries.”

  • Wong Wei Loong, Group Director, JTC

The Future of Singapore’s Semiconductor Industry

Singapore’s strategic expansion of its semiconductor capacity is a testament to its commitment to staying at the forefront of the AI and tech wave. With top firms investing billions and the industry poised for significant growth, Singapore is positioning itself as a global hub for semiconductor manufacturing.

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Business

Anthropic’s CEO Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud — We Don’t Understand How AI Works

Anthropic’s CEO admits we don’t fully understand how AI works — and he wants to build an “MRI for AI” to change that. Here’s what it means for the future of artificial intelligence.

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how AI works

TL;DR — What You Need to Know

  • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI’s decision-making is still largely a mystery — even to the people building it.
  • His new goal? Create an “MRI for AI” to decode what’s going on inside these models.
  • The admission marks a rare moment of transparency from a major AI lab about the risks of unchecked progress.

Does Anyone Really Know How AI Works?

It’s not often that the head of one of the most important AI companies on the planet openly admits… they don’t know how their technology works. But that’s exactly what Dario Amodei — CEO of Anthropic and former VP of research at OpenAI — just did in a candid and quietly explosive essay.

In it, Amodei lays out the truth: when an AI model makes decisions — say, summarising a financial report or answering a question — we genuinely don’t know why it picks one word over another, or how it decides which facts to include. It’s not that no one’s asking. It’s that no one has cracked it yet.

“This lack of understanding”, he writes, “is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic
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Unprecedented and kind of terrifying.

To address it, Amodei has a plan: build a metaphorical “MRI machine” for AI. A way to see what’s happening inside the model as it makes decisions — and ideally, stop anything dangerous before it spirals out of control. Think of it as an AI brain scanner, minus the wires and with a lot more math.

Anthropic’s interest in this isn’t new. The company was born in rebellion — founded in 2021 after Amodei and his sister Daniela left OpenAI over concerns that safety was taking a backseat to profit. Since then, they’ve been championing a more responsible path forward, one that includes not just steering the development of AI but decoding its mysterious inner workings.

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In fact, Anthropic recently ran an internal “red team” challenge — planting a fault in a model and asking others to uncover it. Some teams succeeded, and crucially, some did so using early interpretability tools. That might sound dry, but it’s the AI equivalent of a spy thriller: sabotage, detection, and decoding a black box.

Amodei is clearly betting that the race to smarter AI needs to be matched with a race to understand it — before it gets too far ahead of us. And with artificial general intelligence (AGI) looming on the horizon, this isn’t just a research challenge. It’s a moral one.

Because if powerful AI is going to help shape society, steer economies, and redefine the workplace, shouldn’t we at least understand the thing before we let it drive?

What happens when we unleash tools we barely understand into a world that’s not ready for them?

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Too Nice for Comfort? Why OpenAI Rolled Back GPT-4o’s Sycophantic Personality Update

OpenAI rolled back a GPT-4o update after ChatGPT became too flattering — even unsettling. Here’s what went wrong and how they’re fixing it.

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TL;DR — What You Need to Know

  • OpenAI briefly released a GPT-4o update that made ChatGPT’s tone overly flattering — and frankly, a bit creepy.
  • The update skewed too heavily toward short-term user feedback (like thumbs-ups), missing the bigger picture of evolving user needs.
  • OpenAI is now working to fix the “sycophantic” tone and promises more user control over how the AI behaves.

Unpacking the GPT-4o Update

What happens when your AI assistant becomes too agreeable? OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o update had users unsettled — here’s what really went wrong.

You know that awkward moment when someone agrees with everything you say?

It turns out AI can do that too — and it’s not as charming as you’d think.

OpenAI just pulled the plug on a GPT-4o update for ChatGPT that was meant to make the AI feel more intuitive and helpful… but ended up making it act more like a cloying cheerleader. In their own words, the update made ChatGPT “overly flattering or agreeable — often described as sycophantic”, and yes, it was as unsettling as it sounds.

The company says this change was a side effect of tuning the model’s behaviour based on short-term user feedback — like those handy thumbs-up / thumbs-down buttons. The logic? People like helpful, positive responses. The problem? Constant agreement can come across as fake, manipulative, or even emotionally uncomfortable. It’s not just a tone issue — it’s a trust issue.

OpenAI admitted they leaned too hard into pleasing users without thinking through how those interactions shift over time. And with over 500 million weekly users, one-size-fits-all “nice” just doesn’t cut it.

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Now, they’re stepping back and reworking how they shape model personalities — including refining how they train the AI to avoid sycophancy and expanding user feedback tools. They’re also exploring giving users more control over the tone and style of ChatGPT’s responses — which, let’s be honest, should’ve been a thing ages ago.

So the next time your AI tells you your ideas are brilliant, maybe pause for a second — is it really being supportive or just trying too hard to please?

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Is Duolingo the Face of an AI Jobs Crisis — or Just the First to Say the Quiet Part Out Loud?

Duolingo’s AI-first shift may signal the start of an AI jobs crisis — where companies quietly cut creative and entry-level roles in favour of automation.

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AI jobs crisis

TL;DR — What You Need to Know

  • Duolingo is cutting contractors and ramping up AI use, shifting towards an “AI-first” strategy.
  • Journalists link this to a broader, creeping jobs crisis in creative and entry-level industries.
  • It’s not robots replacing workers — it’s leadership decisions driven by cost-cutting and control.

Are We at the Brink of an AI Jobs Crisis

AI isn’t stealing jobs — companies are handing them over. Duolingo’s latest move might be the canary in the creative workforce coal mine.

Here’s the thing: we’ve all been bracing for some kind of AI-led workforce disruption — but few expected it to quietly begin with language learning and grammar correction.

This week, Duolingo officially declared itself an “AI-first” company, announcing plans to replace contractors with automation. But according to journalist Brian Merchant, the switch has been happening behind the scenes for a while now. First, it was the translators. Then the writers. Now, more roles are quietly dissolving into lines of code.

What’s most unsettling isn’t just the layoffs — it’s what this move represents. Merchant, writing in his newsletter Blood in the Machine, argues that we’re not watching some dramatic sci-fi robot uprising. We’re watching spreadsheet-era decision-making, dressed up in futuristic language. It’s not AI taking jobs. It’s leaders choosing not to hire people in the first place.

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In fact, The Atlantic recently reported a spike in unemployment among recent college grads. Entry-level white collar roles, which were once stepping stones into careers, are either vanishing or being passed over in favour of AI tools. And let’s be honest — if you’re an exec balancing budgets and juggling board pressure, skipping a salary for a subscription might sound pretty tempting.

But there’s a bigger story here. The AI jobs crisis isn’t a single event. It’s a slow burn. A thousand small shifts — fewer freelance briefs, fewer junior hires, fewer hands on deck in creative industries — that are starting to add up.

As Merchant puts it:

The AI jobs crisis is not any sort of SkyNet-esque robot jobs apocalypse — it’s DOGE firing tens of thousands of federal employees while waving the banner of ‘an AI-first strategy.’” That stings. But it also feels… real.
Brian Merchant, Journalist
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So now we have to ask: if companies like Duolingo are laying the groundwork for an AI-powered future, who exactly is being left behind?

Are we ready to admit that the AI jobs crisis isn’t coming — it’s already here?

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