The government’s revised national strategy is the result of consultations with more than 300 local and international experts and organisations.
Singapore’s first NAIS in 2019 saw the country embark on national AI projects in education, healthcare, logistics, security and municipal services.
NAIS 2.0 represents a shift from flagship projects to a systems approach, from AI as a “good to have” opportunity to a “must know” necessity, and develops Singapore’s ambition to be a world leader in the field, the report stated.
Apart from talent development and attraction, the wide-ranging strategy identifies 15 actions across domains like industry, research, infrastructure, the regulatory environment and international partnerships.
These actions aim to meet NAIS 2.0’s goals of developing “peaks of excellence” in AI, and empowering people and businesses to use AI with confidence.
The government will encourage AI “peaks of excellence” in key domains. These include Singapore’s leading economic sectors of manufacturing, financial services, transport and logistics, and biomedical sciences, and the “smart nation” priority areas of healthcare, education and manpower, trust and safety, and public service delivery.
Mr Wong acknowledged concerns about the impact of AI on jobs and livelihoods, including knowledge-based work like research, coding and writing.
“We don’t think this will mean a jobless future. But it does require significant changes in job roles, and more training for humans to harness AI effectively,” he said.
The government plans to invest significantly in adult education and training to reskill and upskill workers, he added.
This will go towards building a “thriving AI industry”. Currently, Singapore is home to more than 80 active AI researchers, 150 AI research and development as well as product teams, and 1,100 AI start-ups.
To make Singapore a more conducive place for AI value creation, the government will increase the availability of high-performance computing power and access to data.
This involves ensuring sufficient carbon budget is allocated towards data centres, and in the medium to longer term, charting a roadmap towards the growth of net-zero data centres powered by renewable energy.
The government will also selectively unlock more public sector data for AI development that serves the public good, setting up a “data concierge” to facilitate such access.
At the same time, the country will build up capabilities in privacy-enhancing technologies to allow safe and trusted data sharing.
Source link
credite