SINGAPORE - With generative artificial intelligence (AI), school counsellors could outsource routine tasks and write comprehensive case notes more efficiently, freeing up time for longer, more meaningful counselling sessions with students.
Workers could be given more targeted career and training recommendations, while models that can accurately match job seekers to prospective employer requirements would speed up recruitment.
These are just some AI solutions to real-world challenges that organisations could create through the AI Trailblazers initiative announced on Monday.
The initiative was launched by the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), Digital Industry Singapore – an office leading tech industry development here – the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO) and Google Cloud.
Government agencies and businesses will gain free access to Google Cloud’s AI toolsets for up to three months through “innovation sandboxes”.
The sandboxes – one for the public sector and the other for enterprises – comprise high-performance graphical processing units to support heavy-duty computation when training AI and software such as pre-trained generative AI models.
AI developers from participating organisations must attend a full-day training workshop, where they work with Google Cloud engineers to identify potential use cases of generative AI.
They then use AI tools from the innovation sandbox to build a prototype and, subsequently, a minimum viable product (MVP) that they will develop over the course of three months.
Participating organisations will also be given the opportunity to present their MVPs to a panel of technology experts and other government and commercial users at the end of the year. The products with the greatest potential will be awarded a prize at an AI Trailblazers Awards ceremony later in the year.
Workshops will be conducted for around eight batches of participants from now till Sept 30, with the goal of identifying and exploring 100 generative AI use cases across government agencies and enterprises within the next 100 days.
The Ministry of Manpower, Government Technology Agency, Mastercard and PropertyGuru Group are among the first 20 participants of the programme.
Speaking at the launch of AI Trailblazers on Monday, Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo said the initiative was just the beginning of accelerating the development and adoption of AI solutions across both the public and private sectors.
“Of course, our ambitions don’t stop in the hundreds – our ambitions have to be in the thousands, and in the not-so-distant future, the tens of thousands. But the journey of a thousand miles still has to begin with the first step,” said Mrs Teo, who is also Minister-in-charge of Smart Nation and Cybersecurity.
The initiative builds on the collaboration between MCI and Google Cloud and the launch of the AI Government Cloud Cluster by SNDGO and Google Cloud in May, both of which aim to cement Singapore’s position as an open and trusted global AI hub by accelerating the development and adoption of AI solutions locally and regionally.
MCI and Google Cloud will launch future programmes to allow various segments in society to gain relevant AI knowledge and skills.
