S'pore wants more AI practitioners & confident users: DPM Gan

Singapore must build up a base of artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners and confident AI users, said Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong.

Speaking at the launch of Grab’s Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence (CoE) on May 23, Gan noted that the new CoE will create 50 high-value AI jobs in 2025 alone.

"I hope this number will continue to grow in the years to come as Grab continues to scale its AI investments," he said.

On a broader scale, as Singapore transforms its businesses to embrace AI, it "must also invest in our people and develop an AI-ready workforce and talents".

To that end, Singapore aims to raise the number of AI practitioners to 15,000 over the next three to five years.

The government will expand programmes, such as the TechSkills Accelerator and AI Singapore’s AI Apprenticeship Programme.

Gan, who is also Minister for Trade and Industry, added that the government hopes to attract and anchor more companies like Grab to Singapore.

It will also encourage more companies to set up AI CoEs to uplift industry and to train and grow Singapore's pool of AI talent and practitioners.

A CoE is a facility dedicated to developing research and best practices in a specific area of expertise.

This will help "create good jobs and opportunities for Singapore and Singaporeans", Gan said.

New CoE

At Grab's new AI CoE, the company is building its own in-house model — like OpenAI's GPT — uniquely trained on Grab’s real-world data to offer more personalised recommendations to its users and partners.

It is also developing a number of new innovations.

This includes a new voice assistant feature in the app, in collaboration with the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH).

The feature would enable visually-impaired users to book Grab rides using voice commands.

Grab will hold a voice donation campaign in June 2025 where Singaporeans can record and share recordings of their voices, to help the Grab app recognise Singaporean pronunciations of place names.

It will also work on advancements that support government initiatives towards sustainable development, such as real-time rain and flood monitoring.

Top image by Ilyda Chua