Singapore updates AI strategy with aim to contribute globally valuable breakthroughs
SINGAPORE has updated its national artificial intelligence (AI) strategy with the aim of becoming a world leader in AI, contributing to “AI breakthroughs and products that the world values”.
The new strategy lays out 15 courses of action over the next three to five years. These include AI-specific training programmes, a dedicated physical space for AI, and the allocation of a sufficient carbon budget for data centres.
“We aim to scale up AI for compelling use cases in sectors like advanced manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, education and public services, and bring benefits to ourselves, and others outside Singapore,” said Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong at the Singapore Conference on Artificial Intelligence on Monday (Dec 4).
Dubbed the National AI Strategy 2.0 (Nais 2.0), the new strategy is the result of extensive consultations with over 300 experts and organisations, both domestic and international.
“Recent breakthroughs in generative AI have sparked renewed interest about the potential of AI, its risks and its implications for humanity,” said DPM Wong. “Singapore believes in the long-term potential of AI.”
Nais 2.0 builds on the country’s first AI strategy launched in 2019, involving national AI projects in the fields of education, healthcare, and safety and security.
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The new strategy will take a three-pronged approach across “activity drivers” in industry, government and public research; “people and communities”, which include talent; and “infrastructure and environment” to provide an effective and trusted environment for AI innovation.
Simon Chesterman, senior director of AI governance at AI Singapore, said Nais 2.0 “reflects a whole-of-government, whole-of-economy approach that is needed to reap the benefits of AI, while ensuring that those benefits are fairly distributed across Singapore, the region and beyond”.
“To thrive in a twenty-first century dominated by AI, we need to be a port for ideas – cultivating local capacity and opportunity, while also being integrated into global supply chains and processes. This new strategy puts down a marker that says we are open to AI and open for business,” he added.
A familiar name that has incorporated AI into its business is Singapore Airlines (SIA), which uses AI to optimise its operations.
George Wang, the company’s senior vice-president of information technology, said the national airline has been able to use AI to analyse customer feedback from its various channels in near real time.
The company has also been training its staff in generative AI and exploring how the technology can improve productivity, he said.
On how SIA hopes to benefit from Nais 2.0, he lauded the possible creation of sectoral AI “centres of excellence” in the industry.