Acting Minister for Manpower and Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Ms Jasmin Lau’s Opening Address at the Official Launch of SG AI Xchange

Professor Chua Kee Chaing, President of Singapore Institute of Technology

Mr Tan Yew Kong, Senior Vice President and General Manager Singapore at GlobalFoundries

Mr Pee Beng Kong, Executive Vice President of Economic Development Board

Good morning and it is good to see all of you here. Thank you having me at the launch of SG AI Xchange.

Now, not a week goes by in my schedule without at least two AI-related events. Sometimes I am speaking with students or workers, trying to make sense of where the workforce is going and also trying to figure out what the employers really think about AI. Sometimes, I am engaging SME leaders, many of whom are still hesitant to try and worried about the cost of digitalising. Sometimes, I am meeting with larger companies – some of you are here today – you know that you want to use AI, but have not quite worked out what it means for your  people – how to reskill them and how to bring them along.

There is actually one more group – not quite often in the room – and this is the group that I thought I would share with all of you today. There is some groundswell of workers and younger students who are somewhat anti-AI. They fear how it will be taking away many of their jobs and aspirations. They also conflate what AI can do with the environmental damage that they are seeing around the world. These sentiments are not meant to be ignored. They are real sentiments and emotions, and there is a lot more we then need to do to ensure that we hold the Singapore society together, regardless whether you are an employer, a business leader, a worker, or a student who is generally anxious about the world that you are in today.

The description of my engagements across any week of my life describes the challenge we are trying to address. Singapore wants to be a place where AI is not just developed, but adopted widely enough to create real value for enterprises, and good jobs for workers.