SINGAPORE – Singapore’s plan to invest more than $1 billion over the next five years to further boost its artificial intelligence (AI) activities will help sharpen the Republic’s competitiveness, business leaders said.
Mr Ben King, managing director of Google Singapore, told The Straits Times that early adoption of digital innovations is important to sustain the competitive advantage in a digital economy.
“The Singapore Budget 2024 has unveiled support that will set this pace as Singapore continues to accelerate with the help of transformative technologies like AI,” he said.
In his Budget speech on Feb 16, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong said the Government will invest more than $1 billion over the next five years into AI compute, talent and industry development.
Part of the investment will be used to ensure that Singapore can secure access to the advanced chips that are so crucial to AI development and deployment.
The Government will work with leading companies to set up AI centres of excellence here to “spur collaboration and innovation, and drive greater value creation across the whole economy”, Mr Wong said.
Singapore’s digital economy contributed $106 billion, or 17 per cent of gross domestic product, in 2022, according to the Infocomm Media Development Authority.
Strategic private-public partnerships will complement the Government’s initiatives to support workers’ upskilling and business digitalisation efforts, Mr King said.
This is what Google has set out to achieve through tailored-for-Singapore initiatives such as the Skills Ignition SG programme, which has helped Singaporeans acquire digital skills for new career possibilities, which has supported 84 organisations in developing impactful generative AI solutions in Singapore, he said.
“Empowering Singaporeans for today, and for tomorrow, means planning 10 steps ahead to ensure that the right structures are put in place for continued growth,” Mr King added.
Singapore was among the first countries to unveil an AI plan in 2019. In December 2023, it launched an updated National AI Strategy 2.0, outlining ways to leverage AI to empower workers and businesses.
In his Budget speech, DPM Wong said AI is not just about ChatGPT or large language models.
Instead, it is a general purpose technology that has the potential to transform a wide range of industries, and to enhance productivity.
Ms Priya Mahajan, head of public policy and regulatory at Verizon, said Singapore’s digital ecosystem holds the potential to fuel an ongoing cycle of economic growth.
This must be accompanied by robust privacy measures and free data flows, as well as a light-touch regulatory approach.
“With respect to emerging technologies, implementing global best practices, such as the establishment of a single unified regulatory body, will ensure consistent standards for both consumers and businesses across different industries.
“This will in turn foster a climate of technology-related investment, innovation and competition in Singapore,” she said.
Ms Tay Bee Kheng, president of Cisco Asean, hopes to see more resources channelled into AI governance.
“With only 36 per cent of respondents in Singapore saying their organisations have highly comprehensive AI policies and protocols in place, according to Cisco’s AI Readiness Index, more support will be required to educate organisations on the importance of adapting internal policies to address data privacy and security and the ethical use of AI,” she said.
Ms Tay welcomed Singapore’s efforts to strengthen its cyber-security resilience, with the setting up of a new National Cybersecurity Command Centre that will better coordinate its cyber-defence operations.
According to a study from Capital Economics, which ranks countries according to their potential to benefit from AI, Singapore came in second after the United States in 2023, followed by Britain and Switzerland.
Despite its strong innovation capacity and huge investments in AI, China came in around the middle of the group of 33 countries due to its strict regulatory approach that slowed the spread of AI technology, the report said.
Mr Sujith Abraham, senior vice-president and general manager of Asean at Salesforce, a US cloud-based software company, was hopeful that the planned investment will “democratise access to digital technologies, spur AI innovation and accelerate business transformation”.
“AI is no longer a nice-to-have but an imperative for all businesses to implement and enable their workforce to work with if they don’t want to get left behind,” he said.
Ms Jess O’Reilly, area vice-president for Asia at US software company UiPath, said initiatives to plug skill gaps, foster private-public partnerships and combine education and innovation can help workers embrace digital transformation.
She added that the extension of the SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit and the new SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme demonstrate the Singapore Government’s continuing support for digital upskilling and access to learning opportunities.
Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, we said Google’s AI Trailblazers supported 100 organisations in developing impactful generative AI solutions in Singapore. The newsmaker has since clarified it is only 84.
