Speeches
Opening Address by SMS Tan Kiat How at AIMX Singapore
26 August 2026
Distinguished guests,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen.
A very good morning. It's a pleasure to join you today at AIMX Singapore.
AI is moving very fast. In a short period of time, you can see remarkable progress and exciting developments.
It can create. It can act, through copilots and agents. Increasingly, it can also propose, test and adapt — pursuing objectives with less human direction.
That changes the question we should be asking. For years, we asked: how powerful can AI become? Increasingly, we need to ask: what will we do with that power?
Because AI is becoming easier to access. The scarce resource may be something else: the capability to use it well. To choose the right problems. To bring technology together with real-world experience and turn possibilities into lasting value.
So, let me start with a simple proposition: start with the problem, not the technology. It may sound simple, logical and intuitive, but I can guarantee that many of us do not do it.
When a new AI capability appears, the instinct is to ask: what can it do? Where can we deploy it? What can we automate?
But those may not be the most important questions.
The first question should be: what is worth solving? Technology determines what is possible. People determine what is valuable.
That is how we approach our National AI Missions in Singapore. We begin with meaningful challenges: better healthcare, safer and more seamless transport, stronger advanced manufacturing, better financial services, and more competitive businesses.
The point is not to adopt AI for its own sake. It is to put AI where it can make a difference.
And making a difference takes more than an AI model. It takes domain expertise, context, judgement, and a deep understanding of the people we are trying to serve. AI gets better at execution, but those human capabilities become more important, not less.
AI is also changing another dimension. It is changing who can create with technology.
Not too long ago, turning an idea into a working digital solution required substantial technical expertise, resources and time. AI is lowering that barrier. The best placed person to improve a system may be the person who lives with its problems every day.
A nurse may see exactly where a clinical workflow breaks down.
An SME owner and staff may understand a customer’s need, which is not obvious from the people outside.
They already have something AI cannot simply be given: a deep context of the problem and environment. AI can help them turn that knowledge into something they can test, improve and scale.
So, inclusion should mean more than sharing the benefits of AI. It should mean widening the circle of people who can build it.
No one has all the answers — not government, industry, researchers or technology companies. The strongest solutions come when technological capability meets real-world expertise.
That is why experimentation matters. In Singapore, we have what we call Lorong AI. It is a place where we bring different partners together. It has over 250 core members and has drawn more than 4,000 participants across 150 events last year.
And it is why events and platforms like AIMX matter. You bring together people who understand technology, people who understand problems, and people who can turn ideas into impact.
This matters as access to AI will be easier. More countries and more companies will have access to similar models and tools.
So, the question is no longer simply: who has AI? It is: who can put AI to work — quickly, responsibly and at scale?
Singapore should be exceptionally good at this. We have the digital infrastructure, talent and research capabilities, practical approaches to AI governance, and a habit of collaboration across government, industry, research and technology companies.
Our AI Research Centres of Excellence and Punggol Digital District give us places to build partnerships, experiment and move ideas into real-world use.
But the real advantage is not any one programme or piece of infrastructure. It is the ability to connect the pieces and keep learning as the technology changes.
For businesses, this means the question is no longer simply whether to adopt AI. It is whether you can use it to serve customers better, redesign operations, create new products and services, and keep creating your next competitive advantage.
This matters more especially for SMEs. You should not be locked out of the next wave of productivity and innovation simply because larger companies can hire more specialists or buy more technology.
That is why programmes like SMEs Go Digital matter. They help to level the playing field and provide more support to our SMEs in our ecosystem.
Singapore should be a place where companies come not just to access AI, but to solve real-world problems with it, test what works, scale what works, and take those solutions into Southeast Asia and beyond.
That is the opportunity: to be exceptionally good at turning AI into trusted, scalable, real-world value.
It’s not just about enterprises and organisations. The same principle applies to all of us.
If you run a business, you may worry that competitors will move faster. If you are a worker, the question is more personal: if AI can do more of what I do today, where will my value come from tomorrow?
We should not answer that simply by telling businesses to adopt AI and workers to learn another AI tool.
We should ask a better question: how can AI make our people more capable and more valuable?
For workers, that means moving more of their time towards judgement, expertise, creativity, relationships and responsibility.
For businesses, it means redesigning work so that AI does more of the execution while people take on more of the decisions and the value-creating work.
The goal is not to automate as much as possible. It is to create more value with the people we have.
AI can help professionals operate at a higher level, workers take on broader responsibilities, SMEs access capabilities once available only to larger companies, and young people contribute earlier.
But none of this happens automatically. Technology creates possibilities, but people and organisations turn possibilities into advantage.
That is why enterprise transformation and workforce transformation must move together.
Through initiatives such as the National AI Impact Programme, we are helping enterprises adopt AI while strengthening their workforce alongside them.
We should judge success not by how much AI we deploy, but by what becomes possible because we deployed it: better businesses, better work, and better outcomes for people.
We spend a great deal of time asking how capable AI can become. That is an important question. But I encourage all of us to ask another question: how capable can we become at using AI?
That is where our opportunity lies. In choosing problems that matter. In putting powerful tools in the hands of people who understand those problems. In helping businesses, especially SMEs, turn technology into new competitive advantages. And in helping our people become more capable as work changes.
So, at AIMX, do not ask only what AI can do. Ask what is worth doing, who should be part of doing it, and what capabilities we need to build so that the benefits last.
If we can answer those questions well, we will not simply be users of a powerful new technology. We will be better equipped to shape our future with it.
Thank you.