Maximising the Opportunity.
Singapore is leading the region when it comes to AI adoption. To maintain its comparative advantage, Singapore must ensure its workers continue to receive high quality AI training, and drive adoption among the harder-to-reach parts of the population that are more hesitant of new technologies.
Singapore has some of the greatest regional potential from AI.
Taking a look at Singapore’s journey to maximise its AI opportunities, we learned three key things:
1
Singapore is well-prepared for the AI transformation.
The strength of Singapore’s digital infrastructure and the country’s energy resilience will support substantial increases in AI use. As a result of these underlying strengths, Singapore’s economy is well-positioned to grow as a result of AI adoption across the economy.
2
The public policy framework in Singapore lays strong foundations for AI innovation.
Compared to other similar countries, the wider policy framework for AI is highly developed in Singapore, and could support widespread AI adoption.
3
There is work to be done to minimise the adoption gap.
Our polling suggests that some demographics are falling behind in their adoption of AI tools, indicating an area of potential vulnerability that could undermine a whole-of-economy push to adopt AI. Improving the training and resources to adopt AI should be a key priority of the government over the coming years.
To take full advantage of AI, Singapore will need to keep its workforce’s AI skills up-to-date.
Singaporean workers already have some of the highest digital skills in the region, and are considered the fastest in the world at adopting AI skills.6 However, there is still work to be done. From 2023 to 2025, Singapore needed to expand the number of digital workers it had by 55% to remain competitive, equivalent to 1.2 million additional workers equipped with digital skills.7
This is all the more urgent today, given the increasing role AI will play in the future of Singapore’s economy.
82% of Singaporean workers told us they would be interested in skills training to help them use AI. According to our representative survey, they are particularly interested in developing practical skills:
Current adoption of AI tools is largely being driven by workers themselves.
Unlike the technologies that came before it, the diffusion of AI is largely powered by ‘bottom up’ adoption dynamics, with employees choosing to use the technology themselves – with or without the knowledge of their bosses. 58% of current AI users said they had largely chosen to use AI tools at work themselves, while 39% said they had been encouraged to use AI tools by a colleague or boss.
This is truer still among younger workers – with 84% of 18-24 year old Singaporean workers saying they decided to use AI at work themselves, rather than being encouraged to do so by their boss or by their colleagues.
There is an adoption gap emerging between key demographic groups that must be bridged.
Economic transformation as a result of AI adoption will require consistent, habitual usage across the majority of the population. We found a 10 percentage point gap in self-reported regular use of AI between men and women, along with a 15 percentage point gap between university graduates and non-graduates.8
Despite differing levels of adoption, we find women and non-graduates tend to identify similar barriers to AI adoption as their male or university educated counterparts, implying that the largest barrier to increased AI use may be an overall lack of confidence to overcome these perceived barriers, rather than the barriers themselves. These groups will therefore require targeted interventions to help them upskill in a format that works for them.
What barriers are preventing
AI uptake?
What are the main barriers preventing you from expanding your use of Generative AI tools in your personal life?
Responses are edited for grammar and spelling, but otherwise unchanged. All responses taken from a Public First survey of Singaporean adults
Google Career Certificates
AI Essentials Course gives key AI skills to Singaporeans without a graduate degree.
Google Career Certificates are flexible, self-paced, 3-6 month online training courses that can lead to jobs in high-growth fields such as Data Analytics, Project Management, and Business Intelligence. Offered through Coursera, the program aims to develop an accessible pathway to employment, equipping learners with the right theory and practical skills required.
Students are able to enroll on a Google Career Certificate course with a S$49.00 (US$37) per month subscription to Coursera, or through a scholarship with one of the program’s 27 local distribution partners, including Temasek Polytechnic, Institute of Technical Education (ITE), and the National University of Singapore. To date, Google has sponsored 13,000 scholarships for Singaporeans to participate in the Google Career Certificate programme, helping thousands of additional Singaporeans develop new skills to support their careers.
Google Career Essentials are short courses designed to help you build in-demand skills to grow your career. One of the courses offered is Google AI Essentials, which aims to give students actionable, practical knowledge on how to integrate AI into their regular working lives. The transformational capabilities of the course are straightforward; by providing learners with the ability to effectively leverage AI, AI Essentials supports the growth of digital skills among the Singaporean workforce. Among the benefits the course brings are:
- A foundational understanding of AI. The course equips individuals with a strong grasp of AI principles, language, and vocabulary, enabling them to confidently navigate the evolving AI landscape.
- Boosting worker productivity through AI. By introducing a variety of AI tools and applications, the course empowers users to streamline their workflows, improve the quality of their work, and boost overall productivity.
- Better understanding of how to effectively prompt AI tools. The focus on prompt engineering has been particularly impactful, enabling users to maximise the potential of AI tools by crafting precise and effective prompts.
- Prompting responsible AI usage. The course emphasises the importance of using AI responsibly, highlighting safety, ethics, and confidentiality concerns, ensuring users are equipped to leverage AI tools ethically and effectively.
“The Google AI Essentials course has tremendously increased my understanding of AI and has cut the time I spend on administrative tasks for school and my internship in half.”
JAIMEER G.
Google AI Essentials graduate
AI Essentials is a flagship course to help people across roles and industries get essential AI skills to boost their productivity, address some of Singapore’s most pressing AI concerns; boosting the digital skills of workers who may otherwise find themselves ‘left behind’, providing straightforward and actionable AI use cases to overcome the ‘knowledge barrier’, and learning how to use AI responsibly by mitigating unfair biases and inaccuracies. More courses like these are needed if Singapore hopes to maximise the opportunity from AI.
Source: Google AI Essentials, 2025
Google and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) have collaborated on Skills Ignition SG Traineeship Programme, a skilling initiative focused on workforce development that helps Singapore build a highly skilled working population to help retain its comparative advantage. Launched in July 2020, Skills Ignition SG aims to enhance the employability of Singaporean entry-level and mid-career job seekers by equipping them with in-demand digital skills, through initiatives like the traineeship programme. To date, over 20,000 Singaporeans have unlocked new career opportunities through Skills Ignition SG since 2020.
The Skills Ignition SG Traineeship programme is a twelve-month programme comprising of three months external training, and a hands-on experience through the immersive nine months on-the-job training at Google. The programme focuses on two key tracks designed to address high-demand skills, Digital Marketing (DM) and Professional Cloud Architect (PCA).
These tracks are now redesigned to include AI into the curriculum, strategically aligning with Singapore’s national priorities in developing a robust and future-ready digital workforce.
Overall, Skills Ignition SG exemplifies a successful public-private partnership, addressing the evolving needs of Singapore’s workforce by providing comprehensive training and practical experience in high-growth digital sectors.