Synopsis
The College of Integrative Studies and the Wee Kim Wee Centre are delighted to announce the 10th Annual SMU-Soka International Peace Symposium scheduled on 6 February, 2026. This symposium, an annual event focused on the Big Questions: Wealth and Poverty explored by Singapore Management University’s Core Curriculum, aims to advance the frontiers of our queries through engagements with the public on relevant issues in the modern world. This year’s symposium, titled “The Future of Inequalities in the Age of AI”, explores the new forms of wealth, poverty, and inequalities in the age where AI is reshaping almost every aspect of human society through critical engagement crossing multiple disciplinary boundaries. How will AI reshape the relationship between work, meaning, and human dignity? What new forms of precarities or social vulnerabilities might emerge in the age of AI? How might AI redefine what we “value” in life? How should Singapore harness AI to build a more inclusive, sustainable, and equitable society? Bringing together experts from different disciplines, the symposium aims to be a platform for open and constructive dialogue and foster deeper understanding of how AI's transformative power intersects with existing value systems and worldviews, questioning whether radical progress in digital technology necessarily equals human flourishing.
Speaker
| Hiro Saito is Future Society Studio Professor at the Institute of Innovation for Future Society at Nagoya University and Professor of Regional Co-Innovation at Co-Innovation University. Trained as a sociologist, he is generally interested in the intersection of power and knowledge. He specifically studies how interactions between government, experts, and citizens shape policymaking in highly technical issues. As a practitioner of mindfulness and design thinking, he has also promoted holistic growth and transformative learning. Currently, he focuses his time and energy on advancing higher education institutions as the core of an innovation ecosystem for collective well-being. |
| Andrew Koh is a Senior Lecturer of Computer Science in the College of Integrative Studies at Singapore Management University. The early years of his career were devoted to farming as a means for poverty alleviation and education of university graduates in Cambodia. He currently researches on enhancing the well-being of the migrant workers community in Singapore through technology. His teaching focuses on interdisciplinary subjects such as affective computing and sustainability from a technology perspective. His work experience through the non-profit, corporate and governmental sectors lends him an integrative lens which he aims to equip his students with. |
| Jonathan Corpus Ong is Professor and Founding Director of the Global Technology for Social Justice Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. He is widely published in the areas of disinformation studies, global media studies, and media ethics. He is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2022–25) and the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Cultural Studies. |
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