Address by Minister Josephine Teo at Singapore Computer Society (SCS)’s Tech3 "Tug of War for Tech Supremacy"

Ms Lim Bee Kwan, President, SCS,

Colleagues and friends,

1. Good morning.

2. Thank you for inviting me to this year’s Tech3 Forum. I’m happy to be back.

3. At the recent National Day Rally, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong shared that we are entering a new era, one that is heavily influenced by AI developments. Today, AI is widely accessible, and is steadily changing the way that we live, work and interact with one another.

4. This has created new opportunities for our enterprises and our workers.

5. But it also raises questions. How can enterprises use AI to adapt to a new business environment? How will our jobs change with AI, and how can our workforce remain relevant?

6. Well before we launched our refreshed National AI Strategy in December 2023, we have progressively laid the foundations for an AI-ready nation. This included thinking about issues like ethics and governance. At the same time, we sought to build capabilities within the government, industry, and workforce.

7. At last year’s Committee of Supply debate, and the Tech3 forum, I outlined how we need to build up three communities:

   1. The first is AI Creators, those who are pushing the boundaries for technology and innovation. There are not that many of them in the world;

   2. The second are AI Practitioners, who develop and deploy solutions in business and society; and

   3. Very importantly, another big group who are referred to as AI Users. They can be found in every role and function, and are equipped to use AI-enabled products and services to increase productivity and take up better jobs.

8. The conversation around AI and the workforce has gained ground. It is no longer just about preparation, but about activation and acceleration. Let me provide an update on our plans to equip our workforce for the AI age.

9. We now have over 40 AI Centres of Excellence across our ecosystem. I have been visiting these centres and have a good sense of the impact that they’re making within their organisations. The teams involved are innovating and developing AI solutions that are relevant and applicable to their own business use cases.

10. We have made progress in building a strong pipeline of AI Practitioners and helping workers across various sectors become more aware about AI.

    1. In 2024, we expanded the pool of AI Practitioners. They include data scientists and machine learning engineers who are essential to making AI models work in specific settings.

    2. For the broader workforce, we updated the Jobs Transformation Maps, or JTMs, to help workers better understand the impact of AI on specific jobs and how they can adapt. We also refreshed our SkillsFuture programmes with content on the latest GenAI tools.

11. With these efforts, there are encouraging signs that our workers are receptive.

    1. IMDA will soon be releasing the 2025 edition of the Singapore Digital Economy (SGDE) Report.  It shows that 3 out of 4 workers surveyed are already using AI tools in their work regularly.

    2. Among them, 85% said AI makes them more efficient and improves their work quality. 

12. If we set ourselves a higher bar, it is likely at this stage that AI use is still exploratory for most of the respondents.

    1. Deeper and more impactful use will come not just with practice, but with appropriate skills training and opportunities to apply them in the workplace. 

    2. Fortunately, in this regard, among the companies surveyed that are already using AI, more than two-thirds plan to prioritise staff training and upskilling. So, the overall picture that we have is that workers are receptive to using AI, and there is also intention among their employers to level up their workers’ training.

13. We want more companies to come on board and to bring their people along.  And I believe we have identified a very significant opening.

14. In almost all of the AI COEs that I’ve visited, the AI Practitioners – the data scientists in particular – tell me they absolutely need and value the inputs of their colleagues in other departments and functions.

15. In manufacturing for example, the process engineers know the detailed workflows. The technicians know when and how maintenance must be carried out.  Without their domain knowledge and functional expertise, the AI practitioners will be hard pressed to produce meaningful business improvements.

    1. In the same way, at another AI Centre of Excellence that I visited, at PwC, the AI team worked closely with the tax agents and accountants to understand the key pain points of the tax filing process to develop a tool to enhance overall effectiveness and accuracy for the Tax team.

    2. Another example is Razer, a Singapore company, that specialises in gaming products and services. A key process in game development is Quality Assurance, usually a time-consuming process where QA testers run the game multiple times to identify and fix bugs. Razer developed an AI tool to support QA testers in bug detection and automating bug reporting. One of the software engineers I spoke to shared that this tool can halve the usual time that he spends on QA, allowing him to focus on innovation and enhancing game design.

16. These examples show that increasingly, we need bilingual AI talents.

    1. Their “mother tongues” are their domain or functional expertise. It is a language they have already mastered.

    2. With help, they can learn a new “national language” – the language of AI – and become fluent in it.  This means acquiring AI-related skills that will allow them to work with AI Practitioners to transform their work and improve outcomes.

17. We believe these bilingual AI talents will be highly valued and building them up presents a real opportunity for Singapore. They will be pathfinders and pacesetters for meaningful AI adoption everywhere.

18. Our action plan to nurture AI-fluency has a few components.

19. First, we will help the broad base of enterprises, including SMEs, adopt AI-enabled solutions and train more bilingual AI talents in their companies.

    1. IMDA will work with tech vendors to bundle training into the packages of AI solutions they offer.

    2. In other words, the companies adopting AI solutions will not just get the AI tools, they will get training support to ensure their employees get the skills and knowledge to make full use of these tools.

    3. The Government will also find opportunities to collaborate with partners including our Trade Associations. We will jointly promote AI awareness through workshops and showcases and develop AI solutions that are relevant to their specific needs.

20. Second, we will work through our flagship TechSkills Accelerator of TeSA programmes to help non-tech professionals gain AI-fluency.

    1. This means partnering professional bodies in horizontal functions, such as accounting and HR, to identify core activities in each function that can be optimised with the help of AI. 

    2. It is also important that we do so with a growth mindset.  Our desired outcome must be to grow these professionals’ value rather than to diminish their contributions. This means actively seeking out new services they can provide with the help of AI.

    3. For example, the traditional role of professionals in Financial Forensics is to investigate after something bad has happened. But they can learn to use AI to solve more complex cases and help clients prevent fraud. It has even been suggested that those with knowledge of digital forensics can transfer their skills and pivot to new job roles, like “Ethical Hacking”!

21. Third, we believe the tech workforce remains important and will also benefit from becoming more fluent in AI.

    1. Along with increased digitalisation, our tech workforce has expanded considerably from around 172,000 in 2019 to around 214,000 in 2024, a 25% growth over five years.

    2. A noteworthy development is how there are now more tech talents in “non-tech” firms than there are in “tech” firms.

22. Wherever they work, tech professionals have the potential to make a bigger impact. We should help them deepen their core engineering skills and stay relevant.  We can also raise them to be “full stack” developers and orchestrators of complex systems and workflows using AI agents.

23. IMDA will therefore also ramp-up support for tech professionals through TeSA, such as the new partnership with AWS and Trainocate on the Career Launchpad programme.

24. I have sketched out some of our plans to in AI skills development that will benefit our workforce as well their employers.

25. Besides nurturing AI Practitioners and bilingual AI talents, we are also working with colleagues in SkillsFuture Singapore and Workforce Singapore to help more people become AI-literate, before they advance to becoming AI-fluent. 

26. However, training and uplifting the broad base is an ecosystem-wide effort and the Government cannot do it alone. Partners, such as SCS, are essential in creating pathways for equipping Singaporeans.

27. I am therefore pleased that SCS is launching the Cloud Skills Pathway in partnership with IMDA and SSG.

    1. As cloud infrastructure underpins our digital economy and powers AI technologies, this pathway aligns training with industry demand.

    2. It also provides learners a clear path into cloud roles that support our AI ambitions.

28. Last but certainly not least, I’d like to acknowledge the communities that support and uplift each other, such as the Singapore Women in Tech community.

29. Bee Kwan shared that we are now at our 4^th edition of Singapore 100 Women in Tech, with a record number of 110 nominations for the Girls in Tech category – the highest since the category’s launch in 2021.

30. Let me highlight some honourees today:

    1. Ng Pei Fern, a senior manager at AMD, is concurrently the President of the Society of Women Engineers Singapore and has paid it forward by launching youth mentorship programmes.

    2. Eve Ang, an SJI student, is developing ethical AI for cancer detection, inspired by her mother’s battle with breast cancer, and motivated to make such technology accessible to all.

31. Well done, Pei Fern and Eve!  And congratulations to all new honourees this year!

Conclusion

32. In conclusion, I thank SCS and the tech community for having laid firm foundations for our digital future.  Because of your efforts, we now have a real chance of enabling workers, enterprises and communities to thrive with AI.

33. The Government looks forward to working with you and all our partners to make the most of the opportunities.

34. I thank you and wish you all a fruitful time at the forum.