AI In Schools, And A Debate Over Ethics Rules

Two things happened at this LegCo sitting worth knowing about separately from the economy talk.

AI is coming to your kid’s school, officially now

The Education Minister stood up and laid out the plan. The idea is called “Sovereign AI”. Basically, Brunei wants to decide how AI gets used here, based on our own laws, values and religion, not just import whatever rules other countries use.

Some real numbers. Nearly 4,900 teachers have already gone through AI training. Over 4,200 got a proper AI literacy certification.

The Minister was clear on one thing. AI will not replace teachers. It can help with lesson content, marking, that kind of thing. But she said teachers still do the part machines cannot, building character, teaching right from wrong, being someone a kid can look up to. That part stays human.

A debate broke out over a new ethics code for LegCo members

This is the first time Brunei has tried to write formal ethics rules for LegCo members. Sounds simple. It was not.

One member, YB Awang Haji Salleh Bostaman, stood up and basically said the document is not ready. His points were fair ones. The draft says the rules keep applying even after someone leaves the council, but does not say for how long, could be forever. There is no clear dollar limit on what counts as an acceptable gift. And there is a rule about keeping information confidential that is written so broadly, he said members might get scared to explain anything to the public at all, even normal stuff.

He asked for the whole thing to go back for more work before the council votes on it.

The Speaker did not take a side. He just said plainly that no document will make everyone happy, and that this is a start, not a finished product. He let the debate continue.

As of the last hansard published, this one was still being argued over. It had not been voted on yet.

Why this one matters

An ethics code sounds like paperwork. But it decides what your representatives can and cannot do quietly, behind the scenes. Gifts. Conflicts of interest. What they are allowed to tell you versus what they have to keep secret. Worth watching how this one ends.

The Sovereign AI push and the skills numbers coming out of this sitting tie into a bigger question I have been sitting with, whether we are actually on track for the kind of Brunei we want by 2035. I wrote more about that here.