Professor Anthony Tung from the Department of Computer Science was featured on CNA's Singapore Tonight live segment, speaking on the AI bubble emerging in manufacturing and the broader cost of deployment without accountability.
Prof Tung identified three patterns of waste in current AI deployment: near-identical foundation models competing within narrow benchmark margins; AI-for-science programmes built on survivorship bias; and AI assistants handed to individual employees for tasks that never aggregate into organisational value.
The root cause, he said, is the absence of AI Deployment Science – a discipline for evaluating return on investment before resources are committed. Without it, capital follows fashion.
"A company of 10,000 people asking the same question 10,000 times is not a learning organisation. It is a forgetting one."
He proposed AI Prudence as the remedy: before every deployment, ask where the value is, how it will be measured, and whether an existing capability could already do it better.
CNA, Singapore Tonight (26 May 2026)