As South Africa was drafting policy papers and convening consultations on how to govern the technology of the future, something quietly extraordinary was happening in Singapore.

There, Vivian Balakrishnan, the country’s Foreign Minister, was doing something that seemed at once futuristic and strangely inevitable: he was building an artificial intelligence version of himself.

Not a symbolic chatbot for public relations. Not a novelty demonstration for a conference stage. But a functioning digital extension of his mind—an AI system designed to communicate on his behalf, manage information flows, and preserve continuity of thought even when he was not physically present. Click here to read the full-text