Minister Josephine Teo’s comments on the A Digital Future for All panel

Transcript of Mrs Josephine Teo’s, Minister for Digital Development and Information, comments on the “A Digital Future for All” panel at the United Nation’s Summit of the Future Action Days in New York City, 22 September 2024

Panellists:

• Felix Mutati, Minister of Technology and Science, Zambia

• Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President, European Commission

• Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General, United Nations Trade and Development

• Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, United Arab Emirates

• Josephine Teo, Minister for Digital Development and Information, Singapore

• Nnenna Nwakanma, Founding Board Member, HealthAI

Moderator:

• Tumi Makgabo, Africa Worldwide Media

1. Future of Work

Moderator: ...The world of work, however, we all recognise is going to look quite different in five years’ time, let alone a decade or two down the road. In Singapore's case, how are you ensuring that there is better preparedness for a more digitised world in the context of work, and how can we learn from what Singapore has done so that we are not always having to go back to the beginning to ensure we are better prepared for a world of work that looks so different?

Minister Teo: Well, thank you very much for this opportunity to participate in this great conversation.

My comments will build on what Margrethe and the Secretary General have said, and that is to recognise the fact that unevenness exists even within the workforce. What this means is that there will be some parts of the workforce that are closer to the technology frontier because their employers are already using technologies in innovative ways in their companies, and so that creates an environment for them to pick up the right skills to become even more proficient in the jobs and the requirements of the future.

But there will be many other members of the workforce who, for example, may be employed by some small and medium enterprises that lag in technology adoption.

Then there are also people who are marginalised. Sometimes it is because they have special needs; it could be because they have a disability. We have to be very creative in addressing past barriers that hindered these individuals in their path to success.

The way in which we are doing this is to enable every single one of the workers to acquire the skills to be relevant for the future. Part of it involves working with employers because they create the momentum and strongest incentives.

But we also need active labour market policies in the form of support for individual’s learning, putting resources in the hands of individual workers so that they don't only depend on their employers to provide the training opportunities.

You need to also build up the training infrastructure so that there is a good ecosystem of training providers who not only can deliver training competently, but whose content meet the needs of the market.

All of these have to come together, and the more we can share with each other how these can be achieved in each of our contexts, I think the better we are going to be. So, we are very grateful to the UN for putting together the Global Digital Compact to create the opportunities for us to do exactly that.

2. Role of public-private partnership; launch of AI Playbook for Small States

Moderator: That brings me nicely to the question of public private partnerships. So, when we are looking at this process, everybody has to play their part. We need to make sure that the rules of engagement not only exist, but that they are followed and that they are implemented, and that there is consequence for transgression, right? We know about, broadly speaking, the challenges of international law when it comes to the implementation and enforcement of consequence. What role, however do you see - maybe you can give us an example in Singapore - the public-private partnership can better foster the implementation and the oversight of what this GDC process may look?

Minister Teo: Since Margrethe was talking about AI, that could be where the example arises.

I think AI being a general-purpose technology, we all want to benefit from its transformative potential. Yet, at the level of public services, very often the expertise does not yet exist, and that is where I think the private sector can be brought into the picture and encouraged to enable policy makers that make the rules to understand how this technology is implemented, and that is exactly how we have done it in Singapore. We encouraged and we invited the private sector to contribute to the development of use cases, as well as our understanding of the guardrails that need to be put in place.

But I would go one step further. I would say that the private sector can do a lot more in terms of helping to build capacity, and the capacity is particularly important for small states. On the one hand, we see the opportunities. On the other hand, we are told of the risks. The question is, will we be left behind as small states?

Now, in this process of figuring out what to do, I think we were really appreciative that at the UN level, there is an advisory board at the high level that is constituted in a very inclusive way. This has given us the motivation to contribute to this process by asking our own Chief AI Officer to be involved. We subsequently invited the whole high level advisory board to meet in Singapore so that they could also engage with the Forum of Small States that was meeting there.

Now, the result of a process like this is that we now have the ability to adopt the principles articulated in the GDC, to help ourselves as nations. And equally importantly, help each other as small states. And in that regard, I am very pleased to note that this process created an opportunity for Singapore and another country that we admire greatly, which is Rwanda, to say: “How about the both of us come together to create an AI Playbook for Small States?” So that is something that we have done, and I hope that this will help all of us.

Moderator: I just love my panel, because everything they say, everybody wants to clap for them.

Margrethe: Can I say something? I would encourage everybody to look at the AI apprenticeship model that is implemented in Singapore because that allows businesses to get to use AI while people in all walks of life can learn about how to do that. And you get experts who are embedded in the local community. So, this idea of AI apprenticeships, the Singaporean model, is really, really inspiring.

Minister: Thank you very much. We’re happy to share more.

3. Thriving with digital

Moderator: I'm going to do a rapid-fire round. I'm going to ask you for two specific things that when we leave this stage and we leave this room as individuals, we need to consider implementing. We're not talking for policy strokes here. We're talking about things that you think we can do when we leave. Nnenna, you've given us a clue. But can you give us two different ones?

Nnena: Connect the schools, connect the young people, connect my children.

Moderator: Thank you. Minister Teo?

Minister Teo: We want to move beyond learning about digital to thriving with digital. And to do that, we can move alone, and we can go very fast that way; or we can go together, and I believe that together, we'll go even further.