Acting Minister for Manpower and Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Ms Jasmin Lau’s Opening Address at the Official Launch of SG AI Xchange

Professor Chua Kee Chaing, President of Singapore Institute of Technology

Mr Tan Yew Kong, Senior Vice President and General Manager Singapore at GlobalFoundries

Mr Pee Beng Kong, Executive Vice President of Economic Development Board

Industry partners and colleagues,

1. Good morning and it is good to see all of you here. Thank you having me at the launch of SG AI Xchange.

2. Now, not a week goes by in my schedule without at least two AI-related events. Sometimes I am speaking with students or workers, trying to make sense of where the workforce is going and also trying to figure out what the employers really think about AI. Sometimes, I am engaging SME leaders, many of whom are still hesitant to try and worried about the cost of digitalising. Sometimes, I am meeting with larger companies – some of you are here today – you know that you want to use AI, but have not quite worked out what it means for your  people – how to reskill them and how to bring them along.

3. There is actually one more group – not quite often in the room – and this is the group that I thought I would share with all of you today. There is some groundswell of workers and younger students who are somewhat anti-AI. They fear how it will be taking away many of their jobs and aspirations. They also conflate what AI can do with the environmental damage that they are seeing around the world. These sentiments are not meant to be ignored. They are real sentiments and emotions, and there is a lot more we then need to do to ensure that we hold the Singapore society together, regardless whether you are an employer, a business leader, a worker, or a student who is generally anxious about the world that you are in today.

4. The description of my engagements across any week of my life describes the challenge we are trying to address. Singapore wants to be a place where AI is not just developed, but adopted widely enough to create real value for enterprises, and good jobs for workers.

5. Everybody has a different view of how AI should or should not be used. Everybody has a different view of how fast or slow the pace ought to be. I think in Singapore, we do realise that the world is changing, and we want to make sure that AI in Singapore is adopted widely enough to create real value for our companies and good jobs for our workers.

6. I spend a lot of time assuring workers and students that we are not blind in our pursuit for AI – that we want to use the technology for good, and at the end of the day, it is not about chasing the use of AI in itself. We will do so if it means giving our workers better jobs, and we will do so if it means providing better services for our people.

7. Earlier this year, we set up the National AI Council, chaired by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, and we are gaining momentum. There are a lot of interest in how we intend to pursue the good use of AI, and we have now close to 100 AI Centres of Excellence spanning from finance to manufacturing. Within manufacturing alone, we are seeing companies in semiconductors, medtech, mobility, energy, and chemicals building up their AI capabilities.

8. But the capabilities are only useful if the companies and the workers know what to do with them. And no single company has worked that out alone.

9. Every company has different priorities, systems and constraints. Actually, many of the questions that business leaders ask are similar. They want to know where AI can make the biggest difference. Sometimes they ask me, and I say, you’re asking the wrong person. You have to be in the company, business, and sector to know where AI can make the biggest difference. They also want to know if they should set up their data infrastructure differently, and build different types of cybersecurity capabilities.

10. As a later thought, they may sometimes ask how to bring their people along. I wish they brought that question a lot further upfront, but it is still good that they consider it in their overall plan.  Now, all companies will answer these questions quite differently. But the benefit of something like SG AI Xchange is from hearing how others have approached it because it will save everyone from working it out by themselves.

11. That only works, though, if companies are also willing to share what they have not done well. In Singapore, that is not a common culture because we tend to be quite shy about where we have not done well and reserved about sharing our secrets with each other. But I would say that in this age of AI, if we consider our economy as one that is somewhat vulnerable but standing a good chance of making frontier moves, then there is a lot more reason for our companies and business leaders here to share a little bit more openly with each other.

12. You will each have boundaries on what you can say openly, and I understand that.  But even inside those boundaries, there is a lot of value in naming what you were trying to solve, what proved difficult, what you had to change mid-course, and what you needed to do differently. I ask that you share that, so that others will share back, sometimes with a connection or a solution you did not expect.

13. GlobalFoundries is helping to set this example at today’s first SG AI Xchange, by sharing its experience of scaling AI in a demanding manufacturing environment. GlobalFoundries has also been very strong supporter of our Economic Strategy Review work, and I think they understand why they cannot go it for it alone. It has to be something that many more businesses are involved in – a sharing platform and community that many other business leaders are involved in.

14. In manufacturing, AI has to work on the factory floor, where quality, uptime, and cost all matter. But the real question was never whether an AI solution could work, but whether it could be relied upon enough to become part of daily operations.

15. A lot of what they had to figure out will sound quite familiar to people in other sectors as well. So, share what you can, because the SG AI Xchange is only as useful as what people are willing to put into it. So those of you today, if you have a story to share, even if it is not a perfect one, let the organisers know and we will be happy for you to share it with the rest of us.

16. Now, a good conversation is useful, but it is only the first step. None of these matters if you do not turn it into action in your organisation after listening to the sharing. Maybe a pain point had been identified, a use case improved, or a new opportunity spotted. Maybe someone also thought about how work could be reorganised. Don’t take this as just a good story to hear, then go back and think “Well, perhaps this doesn’t work for me”.

17. All of these should not be a one-time or one-off exercise. We hope that the exchange and the lessons that are shared spark off ideas. Because AI will keep changing, the learning will have to keep going too. If you are not ready to start now, don’t wait too long. EDB, SIT, Lorong AI, and many other partners are ready to help support you and bring practitioners together to build more momentum.

18. Translating the insights into real change will also work only if people have the skills and  confidence to act on what they hear and use the new tools effectively. I mentioned just now that there is some anxiety around using AI. Don't take a quiet workforce for an agreeable workforce. Many of you have many workers that are supporting your businesses. The fact that they are quiet and not pushing back yet doesn't always mean that they are happy with where things are going. They want to know what their business leaders are really thinking, whether you are already planning retrenchments and slowdown in hiring.

19. As far as possible, I would encourage many of you to be a lot more transparent with your workforce. If there is indeed a plan to automate, share with them what could happen, and what kind of retraining would work for them. If business outlook is not looking too good, share that with them too, because otherwise they are going to think all the transformation you make is because of AI, and sometimes it really isn't. We think that a lot more communication and transparency will help keep our workers and our companies together, and we hope that you play a part in it.

20. We know that the industry is stepping up here pretty strongly. We have Google Cloud opening its Singapore Engineering Centre this week and Anthropic has announced that it is setting up in Singapore. Databricks has announced new efforts to build AI skills locally. These are all good news. We hope that more companies will follow to work with government and our institutions to grow that talent.

21. Those of you hesitating to take on new young graduates, please do so because they do need that first step in their career ladder to start their career journeys. If you're not quite sure how the job roles will change, have faith that they can also change together with the job roles. But bring them on board the companies that you are in, give them a bit of that training and industry exposure, so that they can also be part of a stronger workforce in future.

22. So, keep investing in your AI capabilities here, and keep putting what you learn into practice. We want Singapore to be a place where companies can safely build, deploy and scale AI, with all our strong partners and talents behind them.

23. That's what SG AI Xchange is for. I hope each of you will walk out with something worth bringing back to your teams.

24. Thank you very much.