{"id":3321,"date":"2023-04-01T06:06:36","date_gmt":"2023-04-01T06:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-alumn-nus.pantheonsite.io\/alumnus\/?p=3321"},"modified":"2025-07-15T16:07:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T08:07:58","slug":"man-vs-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/2023\/04\/01\/man-vs-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Man vs Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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WHO HE IS<\/b><\/p>

The term \u201cAI-driven problem-solver\u201d sums up Mr Wang Weimin perfectly. He burnished these credentials at the Trusted Media Challenge in 2022, where he took home the top prize for developing an AI model that can identify disinformation. He is committed to furthering this cause through his work at ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok.<\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0<\/p>

There was a time when seeing was indeed believing. But not in today\u2019s age of deepfakes, when technology can be used to create impressive videos of someone doing or saying things they never did or said. Politicians and celebrities have been the victims of deepfakes, including former American president Barack Obama and Tesla\u2019s Elon Musk. There are mounting concerns about how deepfakes could impact future elections and national security.\u00a0<\/p>

To encourage research into combating deepfakes, AI Singapore, a national programme supported by the National Research Foundation and hosted by NUS, organised the Trusted Media Challenge. Some 470 teams gathered to turn tech on tech by developing AI models that weed out deepfakes. Entrants were presented with thousands of videos, some authentic and some fake. They then developed AI models that spotted trends to determine the authenticity of any given video. Minister of State for Communications and Information Mr Tan Kiat How praised this method at the prize presentation ceremony. \u201cTechnology is not just part of the problem; it can also be part of the solution,\u201d he said.<\/p>

That is precisely what one-man team Mr Wang Weimin demonstrated with his winning AI model. Mr Wang, who graduated with a Master of Science in Mathematical Statistics and Probability from the University in 2017, developed a model that was 98.53 per cent accurate at telling apart genuine clips from deepfakes \u2014 besting his nearest competitor by 0.2 per cent.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Singaporean Mr Wang Weimin (centre, in red shirt) won AI Singapore\u2019s Trusted Media Challenge, which sought to find the best AI solutions to detect fake media. Photo: AI Singapore.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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To inch ahead of the competition, Mr Wang studied the competition\u2019s dataset in even greater detail. \u201cI found that the fake videos in the dataset had two additional traits: They could feature a newscaster with a faked voice to mislead people with what appears to be a media report,\u201d he says. \u201cAnother type of fake video was selfie recordings of people with their voices also faked.\u201d Armed with these, he spent several months developing the winning model.\u00a0<\/p>

That model earned Mr Wang first place at the competition and a handsome cash prize of $100,000. The 33-year-old also received an offer for a $300,000 start-up grant to commercialise his invention, but he preferred to use the technology at his current organisation, ByteDance. He works at its in-house AI research team based in Singapore.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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AI has developed so fast that people can\u2019t ignore it anymore.<\/span><\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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A TREK THROUGH TECH<\/b><\/p>

Mr Wang is increasingly aware of how AI-generated content could threaten society. Currently, victims of deepfakes can release a statement distancing themselves from a fake image or video. But the prevalence of deepfakes will only grow in time, making it nearly impossible to rebut each one, he says. \u201cSo, it\u2019s important that we develop tools that can detect deepfakes.\u201d<\/p>

He believes such tools could even help those who are confident that they would be able to spot deepfakes. \u201cBut deepfakes are increasingly sophisticated,\u201d he admits. \u201cWhen I was viewing the videos provided for the competition, even I couldn\u2019t always tell which ones were fake or real.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

He adds that battling disinformation should not stifle innovation or technological advancements either, citing AI\u2019s benefits in many areas of society, including healthcare and education. \u201cAI has developed so fast that people can\u2019t ignore it anymore. Just look at the success of ChatGPT,\u201d he says, referring to the popular AI chatbot that boasts 100 million users and counting since its launch in November 2022. As a technologist, he advises people to use these platforms cautiously. \u201cIt\u2019s fine if you\u2019re using it for harmless fun. But it gets a bit tricky if you are using AI-generated content for news creation because the information still needs to be verified and authenticated by a human.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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US$78 BILLION\u00a0<\/b><\/p>

That\u2019s what fake news costs the global economy annually (about S$105 billion), as found in a 2019 study.<\/p>

Source: University of Baltimore\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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SOLVING PROBLEMS WITH AI<\/b><\/p>

Mr Wang\u2019s penchant for AI developed after he earned his Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Nanyang Technological University. \u201cI attended a lecture by Dr Andrew Ng, the co-founder of Google Brain, and he shared the possibilities of AI,\u201d recalls Mr Wang. He adds that the world of AI called out to him because of its blend of mathematics and coding \u2014 two subjects he grew to love during his undergraduate days. \u201cBut in the engineering programme, we did very little coding. So, I taught myself how to do it, spending hours studying models and getting savvy with the foundations.\u201d<\/p>

To shore up his knowledge, he enrolled in the MSc (Statistics) programme at NUS. \u201cI had this interest in machine learning but found a gap in my education \u2014 statistics \u2014 which is key to understanding machine learning models,\u201d he says. He juggled school with a full-time job at pharmaceutical company MSD and, after graduating, got a job at Gojek. As a data science lead at the ride-hailing company, he put his newfound skills to the test to develop systems that would better connect riders and drivers. \u201cSo that\u2019s why I applied for the Master\u2019s programme, just to develop machine learning systems that helped people.\u201d If his recent success is anything to go by, it seems like it was a worthy investment. <\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the pitfalls of tech can be tackled by tech, according to Mr Wang Weimin (Science \u201917).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3323,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3321"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3568,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321\/revisions\/3568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}