The AI Opportunity.
AI can support the next 60 years of Singapore’s growth, representing the next stage in the country’s economic journey. With a skilled workforce that is already making use of AI, Singapore is well-positioned to take full advantage of this emerging technology.
Defining AI
AI is a set of technologies that enable computers to perform a variety of advanced functions, including the ability to reason, learn, and act in such a way that would normally require human intelligence. This might include understanding and translating spoken and written language, analysing data, making recommendations and more.
AI will support the next 60 years of growth.
Every few decades, a new general purpose technology has helped power the next stage of world economic development. In 2019, researchers at Google invented the transformer model: which in turn made it easier to scale AI models and kicked off the current wave of innovation in AI we are seeing.1
This is set to accelerate growth worldwide, and offers Singapore a new opportunity to thrive.
Singaporeans already grasp the potential of AI.
Half of Singaporeans told us they are using AI at least once a week both at work and in their personal lives. In fact, Singaporean workers are some of the fastest in the world at adopting AI skills. Our polling has found that an overwhelming majority are ready to learn the new skills they will need to fully leverage the AI opportunity.
of Singaporeans are optimistic about the impact that AI will have on the country in the future
AI’s impact will grow over time.
AI is a General Purpose Technology. That means both that it is likely to have use cases across most sectors and types of jobs, and that it can help accelerate the process of growth itself. Over time, we expect that its impact will continue to expand. In this report, we look at all four types of growth.
Saving time for workers.
In the short term, AI can help workers in getting their day to day tasks done, and helping free up time to spend on other activities. Goldman Sachs has estimated that AI could create around another 7% of world GDP in economic value over a decade through boosting labour productivity.2 In Singapore, we estimate that this kind of impact from AI could create over S$53 billion (US$40 billion) of value.
Enabling new kinds of products and services.
If you think back to the invention of the Internet, what made it really transformative wasn’t just how it boosted efficiency in roles that already existed – but how it enabled entirely new types of product and service, from Google to Amazon to eBay. As Google’s Chief Economist noted in a recent article, AI is likely to activate latent markets – helping meet currently unmet needs, and enabling a new generation of start-up companies to find a niche.3
Increasing business efficiency.
Over time, AI will enable businesses to redesign their business processes and how they work: letting them be more proactive, reduce waste and increase efficiency. This could multiply again the total value created by AI. Last year, for example, Access Partnership4 looked at a range of AI use cases and estimated that AI could create S$198 billion (US$148 billion) of value.
Accelerating growth and innovation.
Finally, AI is likely to accelerate the overall process of scientific and technological development, with applications in areas including medicine, materials design and engineering.
AI can support Singapore’s key industries.
Alongside the benefits AI presents for the whole economy, the technology can help to boost competitiveness among Singapore’s key economic sectors.
Finance.
Singapore is Southeast Asia’s largest financial centre, and one of the command centres of the global economy; around a seventh of Singapore’s GDP is generated by the financial services sector.5 AI could help companies in the financial services and insurance industries improve their efficiency, make more accurate projections, and detect fraud earlier. In total, we estimate that AI could help grow the financial services sector in Singapore by almost S$8.4 billion (US$6.3 billion)
Manufacturing.
Manufacturing represents about a fifth of Singapore’s economic output, and the sector is well positioned to benefit from the country’s enthusiastic embrace of AI. Firms in the manufacturing sector could utilise AI to optimise their supply chains, reduce downtime, and minimise defects. In total, we estimate that AI could help grow the manufacturing sector in Singapore by S$27 billion (US$20 billion)
AI tools allow workers to augment their work and focus on higher value tasks.
On average, we estimate that AI could save the average worker over 21 working days a year by automating administrative tasks. This allows workers to focus on higher value tasks with greater earning power, leading to estimated higher wages of around 8%.
While today’s AI models are increasingly powerful, there are still many tasks that they can’t do as well as a human.
Analysis shows that today’s AI technologies are likely to augment 76% of workers, boosting their ability to deliver and increasing their wages without reducing the demand for their skills.
By contrast, we found that fewer than 9% of occupations are at risk of displacement from AI6 – where AI could take on a significant proportion of tasks, meaning that some workers will require support with their career transition. The remaining 15% will be unaffected.
How are Singaporeans using AI?
Can you think of any ways you would use AI in your [personal/work] life?
Responses are edited for grammar and spelling, but otherwise unchanged. All responses taken from a Public First survey of Singaporean adults
TDCX
is transforming customer service with AI.
Transformative Digital Customer Experience (TDCX) is a Singaporean company that leverages AI in order to support better, faster, and safer customer experience tools. Specifically, the company employs generative AI to monitor the interactions between customers and customer service agents, in order to support the training and development of their staff. This allows the company to generate customised performance scores, helping to develop a more tailored and effective training programme for new starters and legacy employees alike.
TDCX took part in Google Cloud‘s programme launched in partnership with the Government of Singapore to help Singaporean companies identify real-world challenges that can be addressed with generative AI, build generative AI solution prototypes, and bring these prototypes to production.
The programme’s clearly defined structure and dedicated training – such as tailored workshops for the company – were pivotal in the company’s ability to implement the AI solution. This was then strengthened by the company’s access to a team of AI developers and experts from Google Cloud and the Singapore government, both providing real-time support and insights throughout the process.
The company built TDCX FastTrack, a generative AI-powered assistive tool that automatically converts audio recordings from speech to text, analyses and scores customer service specialists’ interactions, and generates customised performance enhancement strategies.
This solution also provides customer experience team managers with visibility into the top customer issues that their agents are encountering, actionable insights and recommendations on specific areas that can be improved with further coaching, and week-on-week performance analysis to determine if training interventions have been effective. To help agents more efficiently access the information they need during calls with customers, the TDCX FastTrack solution also includes a generative AI-powered TDCX Live Call Assistant that transcribes the call in real-time, categorises the customer concern, and provides a set of recommended actions – curated from TDCX’s knowledge database of best practices – that the agent can choose from to address the concern. This solution adheres to a human-in-the-loop design, which means that the agent still ultimately chooses the recommended action most relevant and helpful to the customer. TDCX is currently testing and refining TDCX FastTrack and TDCX Live Call Assistant with two key clients, before implementing both tools at scale and across multiple languages.
TDCX’s use of AI in their training programme has helped to reduce the amount of time between hiring a new staff member and being able to rely on them as a fully fledged customer service agent. This in turn reduces costs and supports the customer’s operations to become more efficient overall. It also allows the company to provide real-time support for their agents – both those that are new to the company and those that have worked with the company for a while – further supporting their professional development.