More public officers in Singapore use government chatbot to enhance productivity
More public officers in Singapore use government chatbot to enhance productivity
SINGAPORE – The number of public officers who actively use Pair, a chatbot which assists with research and writing, has doubled from 2024.
About 50,000 people – making up a third of all public officers here – now regularly use the artificial intelligence (AI) tool to enhance their productivity, said Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo.
She was speaking at the Singapore Computer Society's Tech Leaders Awards ceremony, held at Shangri-La Singapore on May 9.
Launched in 2023, Pair is a secure version of ChatGPT developed by Open Government Products – an independent division of the Government Technology Agency (GovTech).
GovTech chief technology officer Chang Sau Sheong said in October 2024 that about 55,000 public officers used Pair, of whom half were active users.
About 100,000 public officers now use the AI tool, the Ministry of Digital Development and Information said.
'Now, public officers have created thousands of experimental chatbots using our AIBots platform, and have innovated solutions ranging from answering HR queries to guiding colleagues through budget and procurement processes,' Mrs Teo said.
AIBots, also created by GovTech, lets public officers quickly create custom chatbots.
The breadth and depth of AI activities here is growing, Mrs Teo said, adding that the international community is becoming increasingly aware of the possibilities for the technology here.
She noted that when Singapore refreshed its National AI Strategy in 2023, it was to establish the Republic as 'a vibrant hub for AI innovations that could have broader impact beyond our shores'.
There are signs of a dynamic AI ecosystem taking shape here, said Mrs Teo, who is also Minister-in-charge of Smart Nation and Cybersecurity.
She pointed to Lorong AI, established in January as a co-working space for the AI community here.
Lorong AI regularly brings together more than 200 AI practitioners from across industry and government to learn together and exchange new ideas, Mrs Teo said.
She noted that the space in Cross Street has hosted more than 40 events in the four months since its launch, and continues to host multiple events on a weekly basis.
'These range from hands-on product workshops to technical deep dives that are conducted by our home-grown AI experts, leading global researchers, and industry pioneers such as OpenAI and AWS,' she said.
Mrs Teo said promising public-private partnerships are also starting to form out of Lorong AI.
One such initiative is exploring the development of a tool to evaluate the reasoning capabilities of large language models – AI systems that are trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate natural-language responses.
January 2026 will also see Singapore host the Association for the Advancement of AI's Conference on Artificial Intelligence, which has traditionally been held in North America, said Mrs Teo.
She added that while AI will impact some jobs, it will also create new jobs.
Singapore is aiming to triple its pool of AI practitioners from 5,000 to 15,000 over five years through initiatives such as the Infocomm Media Development Authority's (IMDA) TechSkills Accelerator programme.
Mrs Teo also announced 19 senior digital leaders across areas such as AI and quantum computing as SG Digital Leaders, an initiative by IMDA to dev elop local digital leaders here.
This year's Tech Leaders Awards saw four individuals and four teams recognised for their contributions to digitalisation, innovation and leadership.
Clinching the Tech Leader of the Year award was Adjunct Professor Ngiam Kee Yuan, who heads the AI office at the National University Health System health cluster. He developed the Discovery AI and Endeavour AI platforms, which help healthcare institutions to develop, test and deploy AI solutions more effectively.
Speaking at the event, Singapore Computer Society president Lim Bee Kwan announced that the society will launch a quantum technologies special interest group in July, to serve as a platform for learning and collaboration for the nascent technology across academia, industry and government.
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