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Peng Huijuan: An Adaptive Framework for Regulating AI Inspired by Evolutionary Economics

Reading time: 7 minutes

Written by: Peng Huijuan

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (“AI“) has become a transformative force across a range of industries, including healthcare, finance, education, transportation, and entertainment. Its ability to analyse large datasets, automate complex processes, and enhance decision-making has revolutionised these sectors. However, the rapid pace of AI development has outpaced the capacity of existing legal frameworks to provide effective regulation, leading to significant regulatory gaps and uncertainties. These gaps not only hinder innovation but also fail to address critical societal concerns, including privacy, ethical use, and accountability (Calo, 2017). This regulatory lag, often referred to as the “pacing problem,” describes the growing disconnect between the rapid progression of emerging technologies and the slower evolution of the legal and ethical frameworks required to govern them (Marchant, 2011). 

Traditional regulatory approaches, typically rigid and slow to adapt, are ill-suited to rapidly evolving technologies like AI. As a result, there is an urgent need for a novel regulatory paradigm that can keep pace with technological advancements while preserving legal certainty and protecting societal interests. This paper introduces the Evolved AI Regulation Framework (“EARF“), an adaptive regulatory model inspired by evolutionary economics. EARF integrates the principles of variation, selection, and retention with inclusive stakeholder engagement, ethical alignment, and global coordination. By adopting this adaptive approach, the EARF aims to create a regulatory environment that evolves alongside with AI technologies, fostering innovation while safeguarding public interests and societal values.

LawTech.Asia: Media Partner for TechLaw.Fest 2025!

Reading time: 2 minutes

For law, technology and policy aficionados, it’s that time of the year again. TechLaw.Fest is back!

Now in its 10th edition, TechLaw.Fest 2025 – themed “Reimagining Legal in the Digital Age” – will be taking place on 10 and 11 September 2025 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre in Singapore. As the focal point once more for leading thinkers, leaders and pioneers in law and technology, Asia’s premier law and technology conference is expected to draw over 2,000 attendees from over 40 countries.

TechLaw.Fest 2024: Be Ready for Tomorrow

Reading time: 9 minutes

Written by Hannah Nadia, Daniel Koh and Wei Lin Tan | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

Introduction

In the 2023 edition of Techlaw.Fest, LawTech.Asia posed the question: what’s next for law and technology? The 2024 edition of TechLaw.Fest gave us our answer: Artificial Intelligence (“AI”). 

The theme for TechLaw.Fest 2024 – “Be Ready for Tomorrow” – is a nod towards current anxieties over AI’s disruptive potential for the legal industry, as well as how AI is changing the way we think about legal issues. The theme aptly urges legal practitioners to set their sails and map ahead for the incoming wave of opportunities and challenges unleashed by new AI technologies

At the heart of TechLaw.Fest 2024 were four key topics: (1) AI in law; (2) global AI regulations and AI governance; (3) deepfakes and misinformation; and (4) inclusivity. TechLaw.Fest 2024 also saw several significant announcements, such as the launch of the Copilot for SG Law Firms module for the Legal Technology Platform (“LTP”) by the Ministry of Law, Lupl and Microsoft, and the launch of the Singapore Academy of Law’s and Microsoft’s Prompt Engineering Guide for Lawyers. We even saw a splash of pizzazz, with the 2024 Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation & Technology Association (“ALITA”) Awards demonstrating the best of legal technology in the region. 

In this article, as the legal community gears up for TechLaw.Fest 2025 (happening on 10 and 11 September 2025), we seek to re-capture the highlights of Singapore’s signature law and technology conference in 2024, and provide a glimpse of the themes and insights shared by the expert panellists. 

Refining, not reinventing, the wheel: A look at the applicability of ASEAN’s AI governance guides in Southeast Asian contexts

Reading time: 5 minutes

Written by Eunice Huang and Josh Lee Kok Thong

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is reshaping industries, economies, and societies worldwide. Governments across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (“ASEAN”) intuitively understand the huge opportunity that AI can bring for their societies, and are looking for ways to foster AI innovation while carefully managing risks and challenges. At the same time, there is also growing recognition that it would be neither appropriate nor sufficient to mimic the AI regulatory approaches adopted by other jurisdictions such as the EU, China and US. Countries in ASEAN can and must chart their own regulatory pathway that is suited to Southeast Asia’s unique context, building on the region’s historically open and pro-innovation posture.       

This article submits that ASEAN governments already have good, context-adapted regional resources they can use as a basis for their domestic AI governance frameworks. In particular, resources such as the ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics (February 2024) and the Expanded ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics on Generative AI (January 2025) (collectively, the “ASEAN Guides”) can serve as valuable reference points for ASEAN governments who are considering their AI governance options. These guides provide a contextually-relevant basis for formulating AI governance in Southeast Asia’s unique context. Drawing reference from these guides will also help promote greater interoperability and common standards across ASEAN. This will in turn enable AI innovation to flourish across the region, boosting ASEAN’s overall competitiveness, and advancing      the ASEAN Economic Community.      

Deng Haiying: The challenges and impact of generative AI on copyright law

Reading time: 16 minutes

Written by Deng Haiying | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

LawTech.Asia is proud to collaborate with the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law’s LAW4060 AI Law, Policy and Ethics class. This collaborative special series is a collection featuring selected essays from students of the class. For the class’ final assessment, students were asked to choose from a range of practice-focused topics, such as writing a law reform paper on an AI-related topic, analysing jurisdictional approaches to AI regulation, or discussing whether such a thing as “AI law” exists. The collaboration is aimed at encouraging law students to analyse issues using the analytical frames taught in class, and apply them in practical scenarios combining law and policy.

This piece, written by Deng Haiying, seeks to tackle challenges that generative AI brings to copyright law. In doing so, Haiying’s paper explores the current state of the law in Singapore on generative AI and copyright, factors to be taken into account when exploring regulatory reforms in this area, and possible regulatory solutions to tackle the copyright challenges posed by generative AI.

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