Remarks by SMS Tan Kiat How at Mediacorp’s Career Forward 2026

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you, Mediacorp, for inviting me to be part of Career Forward 2026. The theme for this year “Your Career. In Action” of this event is fitting. Regardless of whether you are a fresh graduate, mid-career professional or seeking to rejoin the workforce, you are here today to take charge of your careers in an age of unprecedented change.

Not that long ago, we lived in a brick-and-mortar economy. If you wanted to buy something, you walked into a shop. If you wanted to work, you went to an office. Then came the internet economy in the 1990s and mobile data and smart phones in the early 2000s, and suddenly, connectivity and accessibility exploded. You could shop from home, work remotely, or link up with people across the globe in an instant.

1. This IT transformation created entirely new career paths and work arrangements.

2. Roles like web developer, digital marketer, and e-commerce specialist are all emerging as mainstream careers.

The mid-2000s brought social media and cloud computing, which enabled the rise of the sharing economy and gig work. This wasn't just about accessibility anymore. It was about scalability and speed. Businesses could reach millions of customers overnight. A startup in Singapore could compete with established players worldwide. And critically, so could individual workers.

1. In today’s digital economy, more than 1.5 billion people globally are engaged in some form of freelance or gig work.

2. We are seeing roles like social media manager, UX designer, and data analyst that have become mainstream careers over the past decade.

We're now on the cusp of entering a different age – the age of AI. This is not just another incremental technological improvement. AI has developed to a stage where it is disrupting existing industries, upending existing business models and creating new possibilities we couldn't even imagine just a few years ago.

1. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report projects that while AI may displace 92 million jobs, it is expected to create around 170 million new ones.

2. This amounts to a net gain of 78 million roles that don't yet fully exist today. The question is where these new jobs will be created and whether Singapore can have a fair share of these jobs.

3. Locally, the Singapore economy is growing, and new roles are being created as businesses expand. According to the Job Vacancies Report recently released by the Ministry of Manpower, newly created jobs made up almost half of job vacancies in 2025.

Like every wave of technology before it, we must learn to harness AI effectively. As an open economy, Singapore does not have the luxury of sticking our head in the sand or drawing up the moat-bridge to keep the technology out.

The competition is not between us and the technology, but with other businesses and individuals outside Singapore who can use technology better than us. That is where the real competition is. Here's the key question: how are we riding this wave, and not have our lunch eaten by someone else?

The answer, I believe, lies in something unique to Singapore – a strong partnership between key stakeholders – government, industry, workers and our union. Together, mobilising the entire ecosystem to respond together as one.

Because harnessing technology isn't just about buying the latest software or tools. Benefitting from technology requires us to fundamentally change the way we do things – our mindset, our workflows, and our understanding of what's possible.

Think about Amazon. It did not start as the world's largest online retailer. It began as a small online bookstore, but it had the vision to see beyond books, beyond retail, to imagine an entirely new way of doing business.

Or consider how ride-hailing transformed not just transportation, but our entire relationship with mobility and urban planning.

These were not just companies that used technology. They were companies that changed their fundamental mindset about what was possible, and through that transformation, created entirely new business models and job opportunities.

We are seeing this same transformation happening among our companies here too.

1. Take Certis Group. Most people still think of Certis as a security guard company.

2. But today, Certis has built Mozart, a proprietary AI orchestration platform that coordinates data in real time to detect incidents for Certis officers to respond quickly and effectively.

3. Beyond security officers, Certis now offers roles in robotics deployment and embodied AI engineering, creating new possibilities for meaningful integration of technology in their everyday operations.

4. At PSA, our port operations are now 90% automated, with crane operators controlling multiple cranes remotely from air-conditioned control rooms instead of having to climb a height of 50 metres – or 17 storeys, with better pay and work environment.

5. In place of manual labour, the port now needs more technicians, engineers, software programmers, data analysts, and operations research specialists to keep the system running and improving.

6. Even in the real estate sector, our property agents are now using virtual reality to conduct property tours and tapping on AI-powered tools to create more compelling promotion materials — reaching buyers in new ways that would have required an entire production team just a few years ago.

We are also embracing this transformation in the public sector.

1. The Singapore Civil Defence Force has embraced AI to enhance emergency response capabilities.

2. Our SCDF officers respond to an average of over 700 calls a day, and they have turned to using AI-powered systems to analyse emergency calls more quickly and accurately, helping dispatchers deploy the right resources to the right location faster than ever before.

3. AI is also helping SCDF officers analyse fire patterns and predict potential hazards, making our emergency response not just faster, but smarter – saving many lives and keeping us safe.

4. The Singapore Police Force has similarly extended their reach of their operations with the same number of officers.

5. Unmanned aerial vehicles transmit live aerial video feeds directly to the Police Operations Command Centre, helping our police officers manage crowd density and monitor illegal activity more effectively.

This is where AI creates more opportunities for us – not to replace us, but to elevate us. To free us from routine tasks so we can focus on creativity, critical thinking, and human connection.

All of us need to develop our AI skills. It goes beyond just personal applications of AI. It's not enough to use ChatGPT to write emails or generate ideas. It has to go beyond that. We need to understand how AI can transform our entire workflow, our business sector, our roles, and most importantly, our career trajectory.

This requires a growth mindset and a commitment to continuous learning. The good news is that for professionals across all sectors, there are many programmes available – whether it's SkillsFuture courses, the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) initiative, or training programmes by AI Singapore.

The government is working with industry partners, unions, training providers, and industry sectors to create a supportive ecosystem that helps every Singaporean become AI-ready.

1. For example, SkillsFuture Singapore, in partnership with the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), will develop a self-diagnostic AI readiness tool. Users will be able to gauge their AI readiness level and receive course recommendations appropriate to their readiness level.

2. Individuals who take up selected SkillsFuture AI courses will also receive free subscriptions to premium versions of AI tools for six months.

3. SSG and WSG will also continue to strengthen the career health of individuals by going beyond job matching to proactive career planning and relevant reskilling and upskilling, in support of the national SkillsFuture movement.

Through the National AI Impact Programme, we are building a momentum among at least 10,000 enterprises in integrating AI into their business processes over the next three years. We are also helping 100,000 workers become “AI Bilingual" – professionals who know their job inside out yet know how to use AI to do it better.

We are equipping our enterprises to create new opportunities and new business competitive advantages, and through that – new roles and opportunities for our workers. At the same time, we are working to create a system to equip our workers with AI skills and abilities to take on new jobs and have better work environment and career opportunities that command better pay.

1. IMDA will expand the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) initiative to help non-tech workers develop practical AI capabilities, enabling them to leverage AI to transform domain specific workflows and boost productivity.

2. We will start with the accountancy, legal and HR professions, which are horizontal occupations that span multiple industries and have high exposure to AI applications in their domains.

3. IMDA is partnering with sector lead agencies and professional bodies, including the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA), the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL), and the Singapore Corporate Counsel Association (SCCA), to develop tailored AI f luency programmes for their members, which would identify the key competencies needed to transform workflows with AI and the corresponding training needs.

But even as we do this, we must be clear-eyed. This transformation will not be easy. Sometimes it will feel like one step forward and two steps back. All of us as part of this journey, whether you are a business owner or a worker equipping yourself with new skills, you will face setbacks. You willencounter technologies that might not work as expected, attend trainings that does not fully equip you for specific job roles, or find job roles that may not fit you perfectly from the onset. But, this is part and parcel of the transformation journey. In an age of unprecedented technological changes, this is par for the course. Transformation is not always smooth-sailing or going one direction, but you can learn as you go.

That is the nature of transformation. We have done it before – whether it is embracing the internet, enterprise software, social media – we are confident that by working together, we can certainly do it again. However, the worst thing we can do is nothing. The worst thing we can do is wait for someone else to figure it out for us.

Your business is in your own hands. Your career is in your own hands. The future belongs to those who are willing to adapt, to learn, to experiment, to fail and try again, and eventually succeed. The ability to figure out and chart the way forward – that is one of the most important assets you can have in this rapidly changing world.

Singapore's vision is clear: we want to be a leading AI nation that balances innovation with responsibility. We want to build an AI-enabled economy where technology works for people.

In the next five to ten years, we envision our workers to be AI-ready, our industries to be AI enabled, and our society to benefit from AI-powered solutions.

But this vision can only become reality if you dare to try. If you embrace the opportunities that AI presents. If you commit to lifelong learning and continuous adaptation, we will achieve this vision together.

So, I challenge you: don't just attend the sessions today. Don't just collect the brochures. Take action. Sign up for a course. Pick up a new skill. Learn something different.

Start experimenting with AI tools in your current role. Network with the employers and training providers here. Most importantly, we need a mindset shift around the possibilities of what a career can look like.

The future is not something that happens to us. It's something we create. In Singapore, we are doing this together.

With that, I am delighted to officially launch Career Forward 2026.

Thank you, and I wish you all the very best in your career journeys ahead.