Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the technology that organisations cannot afford to bypass, but they also should adopt AI whilst adhering to a long-standing business rule.
That is, companies still need to ensure they gain real value from their AI deployments, said Kiren Kumar, deputy chief executive of Singapore’s ICT regulator, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).
Noting that AI still is fairly new and evolving, organisations have to separate the hype from reality and figure out where and how AI will be valuable for them, Kumar said during a media briefing.
“We’re not here to push technology for technology’s sake,” he added.
Nonetheless, companies should still lean forward and start their AI journey as soon as they can, he said.
He noted that Singapore sees AI as an enabling technology and is working to ensure the necessary infrastructures and resources are in place to facilitate local organisations in their adoption.
These include plans to add in excess of 300 megawatts, or more than a third increase in data centre capacity in the near-term, and to double subsea cable landings in the city-state within the next decade.
As it is, the country’s digital economy in 2024 contributed 18.6% of Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP), up slightly from 18% in 2023.
This meant that the digital economy generated more than SG$1 for every SG$6 (US$4.66) of the country’s overall GDP in 2024, according to IMDA’s latest Singapore Digital Economy Report 2025.
The local digital economy expanded to SG$128.1 billion (US$99.4 billion) in 2024, up SG$12 billion year-on-year, with more than two-thirds coming from non-ICT sectors.
Finance and insurance remained the biggest contributor amongst these industry segments, generating SG$35.1 billion, followed by the wholesale trade sector, which accounted for SG$27.2 billion. Manufacturing clocked in as the third-largest contributor at SG$9.5 billion.
Across the board, 95.1% of all Singapore organisations adopted at least one digital category last year, up from 94.6% in 2023.
IMDA identifies six categories as key indicators of digital adoption, including cybersecurity, cloud, data analytics, and AI.
On average, an organisation in Singapore adopted 2.3 of these six in 2024, compared to 2.0 the year before.
Large enterprises led in digitalisation, adopting 5.0 across the six categories, up from 4.7 in 2023. SMBs also saw their digitalisation rate grow to 2.3 digital areas, up from 2.0 in 2023.
In particular, AI saw accelerated growth, with 62.5% of larger enterprises adopting the technology last year, up from 44% in 2023.
Amongst SMBs (small and midsize businesses), AI adoption tripled to 14.5% last year, up from just 4.2% in 2023.
These businesses achieved an average cost savings of 52% from their AI initiatives, which IMDA said included savings in man-hours and cost avoidance, such as from human errors.
The government agency defines AI as “tools that enable computers or machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence”. Such AI applications include content generation, analytics, and process automation.
Preparing for an AI future with human workforce
With AI taking over various tasks previously managed by humans, it is perhaps not surprising then that job displacement anxiety has impacted acceptance of AI, including in Asia-Pacific.
In fact, Singapore and India exhibited the highest levels of concern, with 97% in both countries expressing slight to high concerns about AI displacing their jobs, according to an April 2025 study from F5. Conducted by Twimbit, the survey polled 900 respondents in nine Asia-Pacific markets, including China, India, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea.
In comparison, 57% of their counterparts in Japan were slightly concerned, while 30% in the country were not concerned at all.
Tech consulting firm Accenture last month made global headlines when it announced plans to lay off employees whom it said could not be reskilled on AI.
The move is part of a restructuring plan that the company has said prioritises its AI plans and continues its investments in the technology, according to a CNBC report.
Its CEO Julie Sweet noted that as AI becomes integral in “everything we do”, Accenture expects employees to retrain at scale and will exit staff for whom reskilling is not “viable”.
Alongside the cuts, Sweet said Accenture will grow its AI and data talent pool to 77,000 professionals this year, up from 40,000 in 2023. The company already has reskilled 550,000 employees on the basics of GenAI (generative AI).
In a separate AI development involving another tech consulting firm, Deloitte this week said it would refund the Australian government AU$440,000 (US$290,78), after revealing it used GenAI to help generate a report.
The tech consultancy was commissioned to review the Australian Department of Employment and Workplace Relations’ compliance framework and IT system, and had produced the GenAI-assisted report that was later found to contain several errors, including false references and citations.
Asked how Singapore organisations should navigate their AI adoption amidst these two revelations, Kumar said the government was closely monitoring such global developments and assessing if, and what, it needs to adjusts.
He noted that the country’s AI plans include a strong focus on continuing education, skills development, and training.
There also will be announcements in future on how the government will further work with local organisations to “uplift” key non-tech occupations, such as legal and HR, with AI skillsets, he added.
Pointing to the need for “AI bilingualism”, he emphasised the importance of both AI literacy and fluency.
Mind the difference between enhancing and replacing
Singapore is not simply chasing AI for AI’s sake, said its Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo, at the recent opening of SITxNvidia AI Centre.
The technology must be applied to improve lives for individuals and organisations, and bring real-world benefits, Teo said.
She stressed the need for collaborations between the industry and government to better “maximise the upsides and minimise the downsides” of AI deployments. This also should encompass the development of human skills to work alongside the technology, she said.
“It is easy to focus on developing the technology and not enough on the people who build and use AI. It is important for us to carefully consider the relationship between AI and humans and how we want the two to work together," she noted.
“Our first instinct should not be ‘how to make the AI so good it replaces humans’,” Teo said.
Instead, organisations should be looking to apply AI to enhance humans, she said. “There is just a fine distinction between the two."
She urged caution in assessing how AI should be used.
For instance, it makes business sense to apply the technology if it is effective in automating tasks typically carried out by humans, with little or no loss of value.
However, if the AI is not good enough, it does not make sense to use it to replace a human in the last-mile of a service delivery.
“We should instead discipline ourselves to think of using AI to collaborate with humans and let the two work together as one...[where] AI tools enhance human performance and AI assistants perform tasks that complement humans,” Teo said.
To guide the country towards this, she noted that Singapore aims to build a pool of “AI bilingualists”, where professionals who already are experts in their respective non-tech domains, such as radiologists, lawyers, and accountants, learn AI so it can be a common language across industries.
“They can bring valuable knowledge to help the team make good use of AI. They are able to provide context and insights that data scientists and machine-learning engineers do not yet possess,” she said.
“Our AI ecosystem will need ‘AI bilingualists’ at different levels of mastery, and we are systematically identifying opportunities to develop them,” she added.
According to Teo, almost 50 AI centres of excellence have been established in the last 18 months since Singapore updated its National AI Strategy in 2023.
Through such facilities, the government aims to work with industry players to deliver AI solutions for different verticals, such as healthcare, finance, transport, and manufacturing.
