Work and study requirements could be better integrated to build AI literacy: Koh Poh Koon

SINGAPORE – The Government is looking for ways to better “bring school into the workplace and more of the workplace requirements into school itself”, said Senior Minister of State for Manpower Koh Poh Koon during a company visit to Grab headquarters on Feb 5.

“In that sense, reframing what used to be in the past – where you study all you can, learn all you can, graduate and go into work – is now going to shift to become more integrated between work and study in both directions,” he said.

“We have to shift some of the old paradigms to meet the new needs of this new economy.”

The company visit is part of the

Economic Strategic Review (ESR) Human Capital Committee’s

engagement with employers to gather feedback on its recommendations and plans. The committee, which is chaired by Dr Koh and Mr David Neo, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Senior Minister of State for Education, was tasked to support career mobility and resilience in the workforce.

Committees assembled under ESR had said on Jan 29 that a

national workforce strategy that aims to build artificial intelligence (AI) literacy

among Singapore workers could help workers remain competitive in a changing economy.

Dr Koh said: “Technology and AI have created a rapid churn in the kind of business models that will gradually evolve much quicker than before.”

The other area of focus is about equipping the workforce to be more ready for the immediate disruption from AI. Part of the committee’s deliberation is looking at ways to increase broad-based AI literacy to help level up the public’s basic understanding of it.

He noted that many people have anxiety and fear over AI taking over their jobs, partly due to a lack of awareness of what it can do.

“Actually it doesn’t take a lot of effort and deep understanding of coding to be able to use AI as a tool. Instead of seeing it just as a replacement, see it more as complementarity,” he said.

Beyond these recommendations, Dr Koh added that there will be a series of efforts to help people navigate this space, including looking at the career and support ecosystem to help workers.

He said: “If they have to move from job to job, how do we help them navigate this space, and what kind of skills do they need to acquire?

“We have to look at the life course of an individual’s career and help the person to find ways to navigate that space and get more insights of their own strengths and weaknesses.”

At the event, learning and development platform GrabAcademy was conducting a workshop for 30 ride-hailing drivers to help them pick up new ways to do more with AI. The drivers were seen learning how to use AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT and ElevenLabs to perform tasks like translating a phrase to five different languages.

Grab’s chief organisation capability officer Ong Chin Yin said the company has been preparing and upscaling their employees to not just know what AI is, but also to have hands-on experience with it.

She said the company aims to train over 10,000 drivers and merchant partners by 2028.

Over 300 merchant partners have been trained on AI skills and how to use AI skills to actually increase their sales and the productivity of their food and beverage outlets.

More than 50 people have also been hired into the Grab AI Centre of Excellence, which was set up in May 2025.

Ms Ong added that the company also looks at the driver partners’ career aspirations and skills to see if they might need to make certain career transitions.

“More than 300 driver partners have transitioned out of the platform into part-time or full-time careers on their own because of the training that we have provided them.

“There are people who tell us, this might be a temporary stop for them, and we help them move to the next position, their next stop, if that is what they want.”

Dr Koh said the committee is still in the midst of deliberating some of its recommendations, and suggested coming up with a playbook that could allow companies to easily take on board some of the experiences other companies have already gone through.

“They can then get a clearer idea of how to apply AI into their own business processes and, at the same time, bring their workers on board this journey.

“We do need some more time to go through them, and hopefully towards the later half of this year, we should be able to come up with a final set of recommendations.”