Speech by SMS Tan Kiat How at HCLTech's AI Lab Media Launch event

SPEECH BY SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE FOR DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION TAN KIAT HOW AT HCLTECH’S AI LAB MEDIA LAUNCH, 4 NOVEMBER 2024

1. Your Excellency, Dr Shilpak Ambule, High Commissioner of India to Singapore, friends from HCLTech, whether you are based here or visiting us again, a very warm welcome back to Singapore.

2. I am very happy to be part of the celebration of another milestone with HCLTech. We have been partners with HCLTech for more than four decades and our partnership has evolved through the different times, starting from hardware to software and now at the cutting edge of technology, looking at not just cloud services, but also AI and generative AI.

3. AI is one of the technologies that has tremendous potential to really transform industry sectors, economies, societies and communities. This is an area which we are very happy to have more partners, such as HCLTech, to work together with us on this journey and take our partnership to the next level.

4. As mentioned by friends earlier, Singapore thinks about technology deeply out of necessity. We are, unfortunately, not blessed with natural resources but what we have is great resilience and a sense of purpose of building a country, making sure that we preserve the way of life and values our society treasures to continue to create opportunities for Singaporeans. Not just for the current generation but for many generations to come.

5. In these circumstances, the ability to use technology to create new opportunities, to overcome existing constraints, to provide sustainable economic growth is important. Whether it is about computerisation in the 70s and 80s, using the internet in the 90s, or thinking about digitalisation in the early 2000s, to now talking about cloud services.

6. AI is really part of our efforts to use technology to create opportunities. Technology has an entire value system and ecosystem around it. I don't think anyone can say that this technology is the domain of any one company or any one group of researchers or scientists or developers. It is really about building the ecosystem, and as part of this vibrant ecosystem we want to build in Singapore, we want to have many partners to be a part of it.

7. It is not just about building a vibrant ecosystem around technology to use in different sectors such as financial services, healthcare and logistics, but also an ecosystem in which the next generation of talent and workforce are able to participate meaningfully.

8. What I meant by that is giving training opportunities for workers and the workforce. It could be those who are currently employed but want to reskill and upskill themselves to take on different roles in the sectors related to technology. It could also be those who are currently in school and thinking about a career in technology-related roles in the future.

9. I am very happy that we have a partnership here with the industry and academia to provide such opportunities for our students, both existing ones as well as mid-career students who are looking at continuing their education and training. There are also opportunities for our educators and trainers to be exposed to industry trends and understand what is happening out there beyond the classroom.

10. Just like how companies like HCLTech are using technology to transform businesses and transform economies, it is about creating this ecosystem in which all of us are participating meaningfully and finding win-win partnerships across the board.

11. I am very happy to be able to mark this occasion about the setting up of a HCLTech AI Lab together with MoU signings undertaken by the polytechnics to provide more opportunities. I am also very happy to hear that HCLTech has committed to partner with our local polytechnic to train and eventually hire 50 first-year students and mid-career talents over the next few years.

12. I hope that this is the start of a fruitful and win-win partnership for all. Firstly, by creating opportunities for many of our polytechnic students to participate in industry projects and hopefully get a start in their careers in technology with global companies like HCLTech. Secondly, I talked about giving our educators the opportunity to be exposed to what is happening outside the classroom. And thirdly, it is a win-win because HCLTech will have access to very good students.

13. Not many of our global MNCs have looked at hiring polytechnic students perhaps because many of them are more familiar with our universities. All those are very good universities, but I would say that our polytechnic students are very good as well, and some of them are on par or even better in terms of technical skills, such as coding, and in terms of thinking about solving real-world problems. They have different strengths from our university students.

14. So, I hope that this MoU will be the start of a partnership, in which many of our global MNCs based in Singapore, hiring for the region and beyond, will also start looking at our polytechnic students. And we're very proud of our polytechnics because these are institutions we have invested a lot of resources in to provide very good technical foundation for our graduates across various domains.

15. So, on this note, congratulations to the polytechnics and I would like to also congratulate HCLTech for taking this step. The National AI Strategy 2.0 that we have is a live document – it is not a strategy that we have cast in stone because fundamentally, we are in a sector that is transforming rapidly. The technological skills and architectures and the way of doing things from last year may be irrelevant a few years from now. So, we must reskill ourselves on an ongoing basis. We will always be pragmatic and agile and that is where we welcome greater collaboration between the government, industry as well as academia, to collectively find ways of remaining relevant. I welcome feedback, suggestions, and input on how we can continue to adapt our strategies, programmes, schemes, partnerships, and find new ways of doing things and creating new opportunities for Singapore and our partners in the industry.

16. I congratulate HCLTech and the polytechnics on the wonderful start of a new partnership and I look forward to many more years with our industry partners.

17. Thank you.