Shaping the Human Side of Singapore’s AI Revolution
- By Andy Sim, Dell Technologies
- September 15, 2025
Singapore stands at a defining moment in its technological journey. Among the world's first nations to establish a comprehensive AI strategy in 2019, the city-state recognized early on that artificial intelligence (AI) is vital for its continued prosperity. As Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong underscored in his recent National Day Rally speech, AI will fundamentally transform the way we live, work and interact with one another.
Take a second to think about what this means: live, work, and interact. This isn’t just about analyzing data, synthesizing information, or incremental productivity gains. Above all, it is about people. It is about transforming how we learn, think, and create by inviting a new form of intelligence into our very process of reasoning and imagination.
This is why the real challenge to prepare for this AI-enabled future lies in empowering individuals, communities, and organizations to understand, trust, and confidently use AI in ways that help them thrive in their work and lives.
Envisioning an inclusive AI economy
With its breadth of advanced, sophisticated capabilities, AI could reshape the very foundations of the economy, altering how value is created, how industries operate, and which skills are most rewarded. Research has indicated that AI skills could command a wage premium of 23%, exceeding the value of most degrees. Without deliberate action, we risk creating a world of AI “haves” and “have-nots”, where access to higher-value roles, career success and better quality of life is determined by one’s ability to command these new tools.
To ensure AI becomes a driver of shared prosperity, cultivating widespread AI literacy and ensuring equitable access to AI are fundamental. AI literacy encompasses everything from knowing how to write an effective prompt to understanding the ethical implications of an algorithm. Singapore's society as a whole must work to ensure that its citizens, from under-resourced students to workers in small and medium-sized enterprises, can access the tools and acquire the skills they need to participate fully in this AI revolution, ensuring that no one is left behind in Singapore’s AI-powered future.
Unlocking human potential in the age of AI
Encouragingly, Singaporeans are ready to embrace this future. A recent LinkedIn study reveals that 69% of professionals in Singapore are optimistic about AI's potential to improve their work lives, outpacing their counterparts in the U.S. and U.K. Yet, channeling this optimism into AI competency requires robust and coordinated efforts from both government and enterprises.
The Singapore government is laying the groundwork, with ambitious goals to triple its AI talent pool to 15,000 practitioners by 2028 through initiatives like SkillsFuture Singapore and the TechSkills Accelerator. While government programs provide an essential foundation, enterprises must play an equally active role in embedding AI skills into day-to-day business practice. Many companies are already accelerating AI adoption by introducing new tools, identifying potential use cases, and conducting one-off training workshops for employees.
Yet, these efforts alone are insufficient to build lasting expertise. In the AI era, continuous learning is the new normal. The AI model that is cutting-edge today will be legacy technology tomorrow. Consequently, businesses must foster a culture of curiosity and continuous adaptation. This means investing in time and resources for employees to experiment, refresh and expand their AI skills, ensuring enterprise AI tools evolve in line with sector-specific needs and the latest technology advancements, as well as providing clear guidance on responsible AI usage. Crucially, integrating AI into work should be an open, organization-wide conversation, not a series of isolated experiments carried out in silos.
Raising the first AI-native generation
As Singapore upskills today’s workforce, the nation must simultaneously prepare tomorrow's leaders. AI is changing how young people learn and acquire knowledge. While some educators focus on detecting AI use out of fear of academic dishonesty, the greater risk lies in failing to provide our next generation with a future-ready education.
The Singapore government’s Transforming Education through Technology (EdTech) Masterplan 2030, launched in 2023, charts a path towards “technology-transformed learning,” with AI at its core. To nurture a generation of AI-savvy talent, these skills must be embedded early, integrating AI literacy into formal primary and secondary education. This goes far beyond teaching coding — it is about teaching young minds the art of prompt engineering, the ethics of data, and the crucial skill of digital discernment — the ability to question, verify, and build upon AI-generated content. Every Singaporean student has to learn how to leverage AI as their cognitive partner; not to replace, but to cultivate their critical thinking, complex problem-solving skills, and creativity.
Schools cannot achieve this alone. Building a robust talent pipeline requires deep, synergistic partnerships between industry and academia. By co-developing AI curricula according to industry needs, enterprises can help equip graduates with relevant, job-ready skills to create a self-sustaining ecosystem where students gain hands-on skills, employers access skilled talent, and Singapore builds a self-sustaining AI talent ecosystem.
A people-first AI future
The nations that lead in the AI revolution will be those that invest not only in computing power, but in people. AI-fluent Singaporeans have the potential to become the nation's most powerful economic engine, innovating smarter products, transforming industries from manufacturing to finance, and solving some of society’s greatest challenges, such as healthcare and climate change. Singapore has the vision, the momentum, and the means — now it must ensure no one is left behind.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CDOTrends. Image credit: iStockphoto/greenbutterfly
Andy Sim, Dell Technologies
Andy Sim is the vice president and managing director in Singapore at Dell Technologies. He oversees the company’s growth and operations in Singapore, with primary responsibilities for leading the sales strategy, go-to-market approach, business development, and enhancing relationships with customers across the public and private sectors, as well as partners and alliances.
He has over 30 years of industry experience with global companies, including Dell Technologies, Samsung, Cisco Systems, Silicon Graphics, 3M and Hewlett-Packard. His unmistakable passion, coupled with experience across a wide range of regional leadership roles, puts him in a unique position to drive the business in an ever-evolving and dynamic technology landscape.