Speech by Minister Josephine Teo at the Opening of SITxNVIDIA AI Centre

Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) Board of Trustees Chairman,

Mr Bill Chang SIT President,

Professor Chua Kee Chaing, SIT-NVIDIA AI Centre Co-Directors,

Dr. Ng Aik Beng and Dr. Daniel Wang

Industry partners and Colleagues,

1. Good morning. I’m happy to be back at SIT to join you for the formal launch of SNAIC.

2. You may be sick of hearing about AI by now.

   1. Is everything about AI?

   2. Is there nothing else besides AI?

3. Let me start by saying we aren’t pursuing AI for AI’s sake.

   1. We are far more interested in how this technology can be used to improve lives, whether for individuals or through organisations.

   2. There is no use if we talk about how great AI is, if it isn’t bringing benefits in the real world. 2

4. You would have heard Prime Minister Wong share at the recent National Day Rally (NDR), some examples of how AI is being deployed in Singapore to best support our citizens and make the most of opportunities.

5. There are many more examples supported by the almost 50 AI Centres of Excellence (CoEs) that have been set up in the last 18 months since we launched the refreshed National AI Strategy (NAIS2.0).

6. I have been visiting these AI CoEs to understand the impact of AI within organisations, and I’m impressed by how it is being used to raise productivity and expand opportunities for our people.

7. Let me share some recent examples.

   1. Razer’s AI-driven Quality Assurance (QA) Companion almost halves the time required for new games’ QA testing and bug detection. Other tools in its AI suite will also empower game developers and many others to design personalised gaming experiences.

   2. Grab is using AI for code development. It is also going beyond internal productivity to help its platform merchants do business better, with intelligent assistants that provide business insights and operational support.

8. Clearly, there is a competitive dimension to AI. Companies want to use AI to give themselves an edge, and countries want the same too.

9. Both will drive the adoption of AI, but there should also be a collaborative dimension to AI.

10. Take AI governance for instance, where there are a lot of questions and no one has all the answers.

    1. I just returned from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York where the Global Dialogue on AI Governance was just launched.

11. And Singapore continues to be a consistent and steadfast in contributing to conversations like these.

    1. . Earlier this year, Singapore hosted the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). It was the biggest that they have ever held outside of the United States and drew 11,000 delegates.

    2. On the sidelines of ICLR, we also hosted the Singapore Conference on AI - International Scientific Exchange (SCAI-ISE) on Research Priorities for Safe and Responsible AI. This led to the formation of “The Singapore Consensus” on what the priorities should be. It is still talked about when I meet members of the community who care a lot about AI governance.

    3. Next January, Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI) will also have its meeting in Singapore.

12. All these collaborations seek to promote better ways to maximise the upsides and minimise the downsides of AI deployment.

13. Another important area for collaboration is in developing our people.

    1. It is easy to focus on developing the technology, and not enough on the people who build and use AI.

    2. It is important for us to carefully consider the relationship between AI and humans and how we want the two to work together.

14. I believe our first instinct should not be “how to make the AI so good it replaces humans”. Instead, it should be: “how can we make AI so good, that it enhances all humans?” There is just a fine distinction between the two.

15. Researchers at MIT found something that supports my belief.

    1. When radiologists were allowed to use an AI diagnostic tool called CheXpert, the accuracy of their diagnoses actually declined, even though the AI tool alone performed better in diagnoses than two-thirds of radiologists.

    2. Why did this superior AI tool produce inferior results when used by professionals?

16. The problem wasn’t with the AI’s technical ability.

    1. The problem was likely because the tool was not designed for collaboration with human experts.

    2. It offered little transparency about its reasoning, leading radiologists to suspend their better judgement even when they had suspicions about CheXpert’s diagnosis.

    3. More fundamentally, it reduced expert opinion to image scanning, failing to incorporate other essential considerations such as medical histories, doctor-patient conversations, and exchanges with other experts.

17. In other words, we should be careful when we think about how to use AI.

    1. AI will sometimes be very effective in automating tasks performed by humans, with little or no loss of value. Automation makes sense in such cases.

    2. But this is not a given. In some instances, the AI is not good enough and pursuing the last bit of performance improvement just to replace a human makes no sense.

    3. In such cases, we should instead discipline ourselves to think of using AI to collaborate with humans and let the two work together as one.

18. This is the idea of AI as a teammate which I spoke about recently. Where AI tools enhance human performance, and AI assistants perform tasks that complement humans.

19. How can we go about this?

Developing our pipeline of AI practitioners

20. First, we should continue to grow the pool of AI practitioners. These are people steeped in technical skills like data science and machine learning.

    1. In the era of Generative AI, they will also have the skills to build or fine-tuning large language models (LLMs), or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to orchestrate teams of AI Agents.

    2. Having more AI practitioners will expand our capacity for deploying AI as teammates.

21. Today, I am pleased to announce a new SNAIC AI Programme that will contribute directly to this goal.

    1. Supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s (IMDA) TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) initiative, the programme will train more than 200 fresh graduates and mid-career professionals over the next three years in advanced AI systems and building AI applications.

    2. Trainees will begin with two months of intensive upskilling based on the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute’s curriculum.

    3. They will then undertake four months of guided hands-on industry projects, and emerge from the programme ready to contribute meaningfully to industry.

    4. This will add to our growing pool of AI practitioners that we are nurturing from other existing programmes.

Nurturing interdisciplinary “AI Bilingualists”

23. The AI “dream team” in Singapore will not just have practitioners who are experts in AI. There will also need to be what I have called “AI bilingualists”.

    1. These are domain experts like radiologists, accountants, technicians, lawyers, and creators, who are already knowledgeable in their fields – or their “mother tongues”.

    2. They can thus bring valuable knowledge to help the team make good use of AI. They are able to provide the context and provide insights that the data scientists and machine-learning engineers do not yet possess.

    3. But for this team to work well together, it helps that these domain experts to learn a common language – that is the “language” of AI.

24. Singaporeans know from experience that learning two languages is not easy, but it is not impossible.

    1. It is more fun to learn together and practise with one another. Many of us will get on well enough with conversational level ability, but some of us will need to read or write.

    2. And a smaller group may become masters of both languages.

25. Our AI ecosystem will need “AI bilingualists” at different levels of mastery, and we are systematically identifying opportunities to develop them.

26. So I am excited that SIT is taking the lead to nurture “AI bilingualists” at the highest level of mastery, with a new Doctoral Training Centre for Applied AI.

    1. This is the first of several planned Doctoral Training Centres that will provide Singaporeans who are already domain or function experts, the chance to be experts in applying AI as well.

    2. Subsequent centres will focus on developing more “AI bilingualists” who can contribute to AI innovation in Singapore’s priority sectors, such as maritime and healthcare.

Building ecosystem-wide partnerships for AI deployment

26. Finally, let me say something about a different but equally important kind of collaboration – between industry, research community, and government.

27. The SNAIC is a good example of this.

    1. By combining SIT’s strength in applied AI and translational research with NVIDIA’s cutting-edge technology and technical expertise, the centre helps businesses of all sizes understand, testbed, develop, and implement AI solutions across a wide range of sectors.

28. In the one and a half years since it was established, the SNAIC has worked with 70 companies to deliver 50 AI solutions that create real business impact across the manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and transport sectors.

    1. For instance, the Centre has worked with Tan Tock Seng Hospital to develop collaborative AI tools that support clinicians in delivering faster and accurate care.

    2. AI tools have helped reduce patient waiting times and provide better support for each patient in the journey of recovery.

Looking forward

29. As we mark the official launch of the SIT-NVIDIA AI Centre today, I want to thank our industry partners, researchers, and faculty members for their commitment and contributions to Singapore’s AI development.

30. I am encouraged by the partners from around the world who want to work with Singapore on innovating in AI, and invite you to continue collaborating with our AI ecosystem.

31. Together, I believe that we can realise the vision of AI for the Public Good, for Singapore and the World.

32. Thank you once again.