Minister Jasmin Lau lays out Singapore’s AI vision: AI serves, human insight leads

The government’s ability to support its citizens and economy in a digital nation hinges on its own digital literacy. 

At the AWS Public Sector Day 2025 in Singapore on September 30, Singapore’s Minister of State Jasmin Lau asserted that government fluency in technology was non-negotiable for national success in the digital era. 

“The more that we in government understand technology, the more we know what kind of support and enablers that our businesses and workers need,” she said during her opening keynote. 

She added that the government played a crucial role in providing clarity and confidence in how both the people and public sector should use artificial intelligence (AI). 

To bridge technology and public services, she highlighted that public sector leaders must set the standard to use emerging technologies with purpose and principle.  

This was a vital step that would empower every Singaporean to do the same. 

Training more ‘bilingual practitioners’ in government 

What separated responsible AI use from “reckless experimentation” was deep domain knowledge, as well as a grasp of the user’s needs and pain points. 

She reiterated the need to train more “bilingual AI practitioners” in the government, a term first coined by Minister for Digital Development and Information, Josephine Teo, at a separate event, referring to individuals who could speak both the language of AI and their individual domains.  

Lau highlighted Health Kaki to illustrate bilingual teams in action, which was an interagency collaboration between national healthtech agency Synapxe, Ministry of Health (MOH), Health Promotion Board (HPB), tech consultancy Temus and Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

Health Kaki was a generative AI (GenAI) prototype developed for Singapore’s public healthcare sector translates health goals into personalised daily nudges using AI and behavioral insights.  

For civil servants to effectively harness technology, they must “get their hands dirty,” she said, adding that this hands-on experience is key to understanding not only know to use the AI tools, but also what they cannot do to yield the most impact. 

“We cannot be asking people to embrace what we do not understand ourselves,” she emphasised, urging civil servants in the audience to attend the mandatory AI literacy course that was recently announced by Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong. 

She cautioned against civil servants to perceive subsidised courses in the government as a “luxury”, but a “responsibility” and “to stay relevant to the very people we serve.” 

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Creating spaces for ground-up innovation 

Another key takeaway from Lau’s keynote was that true transformation started with people closest to the problems, and not through a top-down mandate. 

“As leaders, we must create that space for our public officers to tinker, learn and transform from the ground-up,” she said. 

She cited the AI Incubator Programme where civil servants across Workforce Singapore (WSG), Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and other public agencies, were supported by AWS to build AI prototypes to automate marketing, job matching and urban planning.  

“They were everyday public servants who solved problems and decided to build their own solutions,” she noted. 

Having experimented with AI, she noted that technology was not a cure-all, but a specific key that unlocks the doors that were designed for.  

She acknowledged that government AI tools like Pair and AIBots have become essential “daily companions” for civil servants. 

“They don't replace our thinking, but free us [from laborious tasks] to focus on the thinking that really matters,” she added. 

Tackling ‘digital opium’ through human-centred design 

Lau warned against the tempting but dangerous overreliance on AI, cautioning that its initial ease could foster laziness and addiction.  

She shared about the experience of delivering her maiden speech in Parliament last week, as she outlined her own fears about technology and AI becoming a “digital opium”.
 

The risk of this overreliance, she noted, was that civil servants might stop applying wisdom and human judgment to their work.  
 

“AI will help us, but remember not to lose humanity when we use a little bit more technology,” she explained.  

She advised centring policy or product designs to core human values and deliberately create spaces for human insight in every system and workflow where it can contribute the most. 

“We must intentionally think about where we want to keep the human in the loop,” she emphasised. 

Currently, the Singapore government is exploring using AI agents to improve public service delivery.  

At the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board, these agents were used in call centres for simple administrative queries, so frontline officers could offer targeted counselling and advice.  

“Ultimately, these agents will process information way faster than all of us, but they will not be able to counsel as effectively as you,” she said. 

As the AI wave continues to reshape how societies live, work and play, Lau highlighted that this presents a crucial choice for every country, organisation and individual. 

“Will you be swept along by the tide, or will you choose to rise and ride it purposefully?” she asked, underlining the need for governments to commit to intentional actions today to master the country’s digital journey.