Ong Mei Xi, Deputy Director AI Lab, Digital and Intelligence Service (DIS), Singapore

1. How do you use technology/policy to improve citizens’ lives? Tell us about your role or organisation. 

Enhancing National Security Through AI

I’m currently assuming the role of a Deputy Director (AI Lab) in the Digital and Intelligence Service (DIS), the fourth Service of the Singapore Armed Forces.

My role involves strategic and operational planning for AI integration into the DIS military operations to strengthen national security and keep Singapore safe.

Integrating AI into military operations is a fascinating journey where cutting-edge technology meets real-world problem-solving, solving problems that really matter to us – and there’s a surprising element of fun involved.

We get to work closely with some of the brightest minds in AI from the tech industry, Whole-of-Government (WoG), Defence Tech Community (DTC) and even other militaries. 

We identify unique operational challenges and pilot AI projects to incubate, test and refine AI technologies first in controlled environments and then enjoy the thrill of seeing how AI reshapes what we envisioned was possible in a real-world setting through SAF exercises such as Exercise Forging Sabre - an SAF integrated sense and strike exercise involving more than 1000 personnel from across the SAF and our DTC engineers.

From AI algorithms that factor in real-time information to enhance battlefield situation awareness for mission commanders to Computer Vision models that detect and identify objects-of-interests, there are far more AI applications in the military context waiting for us to discover.

Collaboration Drives Innovation

The fun doesn’t stop with the technology and the collaboration between tech and policy teams is akin to solving an evolving puzzle. Policy teams define the guardrails while the tech teams get creative, finding new ways to push boundaries on what’s achievable.

There is a unique satisfaction in working together to bridge the gap between vision (what we dream AI can do) and implementation (what AI can actually do).

Improving Lives Beyond Technology

AI integration isn’t just about technology, it is about people - re-defining policies to enable AI to improve the lives of our people who use them.

Additionally, the collaboration, trust and camaraderie built along the way? That is something AI is unable to even replicate.

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2. What was the most impactful project you worked on this year? 

The greatest challenge that comes with AI integration at scale in a large organisation is changing the way we work fundamentally.

With AI in our live operations, we needed to learn how to interact across multiple functions with agility and enable our DIS leaders to learn the tradecraft needed to own and change decisions yielded from AI operations.

The most impactful project that I worked on this year was to drive an organisation-wide initiative to adopt a common set of agile framework and organisational processes.

It was critical for everyone to be speaking the same language and have the same interpretation of the various technology terminologies and have the same level of expectations of agility across the various interdependent functions.

This would form the necessary foundation for the DIS to work together, to efficiently scale and effectively reap the learnings from AI adoption in our organisation.

3. What was one unexpected learning from 2024? 

Cultural transformation and stakeholder buy-in are as critical as AI technology development and deployment in a large organisation.

Apart from my anticipated challenges such as developing bespoke algorithms to address the needs of our digital-military operations, driving data integration and infrastructure scaling, I also learnt that addressing the human element in adopting AI was equally vital and unexpectedly complex.

We need to address the fears around the perceived loss of control and accountability for AI-driven decisions and foster trust in the technologies and nurture a data-sharing culture amidst organisational silos.

Successful AI operationalisation is not only a technical endeavour, but also a holistic one that requires the alignment of people, processes and policies.

4. What’s a tool or technique you’re excited to explore in 2025? 

I recently attended the inaugural Quantum and AI conference that revealed the possibilities of combining quantum computing with Artificial Intelligence (AI).

I was pleasantly surprised that tech industry leaders such as IBM and Google have already made significant strides in quantum computing technologies and the potential for hybrid quantum AI techniques are already being tested and have shown promise.

I’m excited to see how we could take on the first baby step for the DIS to explore hybrid Quantum AI techniques (i.e quantum embeddings with classical AI machine learning techniques) and see how we could potentially not only reap the potential of this amazing combination in our military digital space but also to seed the requisite technical expertise in the DIS.

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5. Everybody’s talking about AI today – give us your hot take on AI and what it means for the public sector.

My hot take - I believe that the real game changer for AI in the public sector isn’t only about automation and efficiencies - it’s also about making the right AI-augmented decisions.

Singapore’s Smart Nation initiatives aim to deliver hyper-personalised and proactive AI services, tailored to the needs of our individualised citizens.

Whilst this demands just and transparent governance frameworks to maintain the public trust in AI, there are also implicit demands on citizens to learn how to make the right AI-augmented decisions and use AI ethically and responsibly for social good.

6. What are your priorities for 2025? 

I imagined different sets of priorities for the different lines of efforts that the AI lab today lead.

For AI technology development, we need to double down on our understanding of the logic behind the corresponding tech tradecrafts so that we can better upstream design our operations early and shorten the time-to-deployment for our operational users to reap the benefits quickly.

For AI proliferation and operationalisation in the DIS, there are clearly pockets of areas such as education and training where we can further leverage on commercial AI technologies.

We should prioritise AI adoption in these areas to accelerate the training efforts needed for our operational folks on the ground to gain trust and use them in operations effectively.

7. What advice do you have for public sector innovators? 

Public sector innovation is not just about technology, it’s also about transforming systems to enable meaningful change.

As we continuously think beyond traditional approaches, innovative technologies, focusing on delivering the good for the people while addressing downstream effects on the immutables in a system such as ownerships, accountabilities, processes are critical for successful innovations to proliferate in the public sector.

To all public sector innovators, it will always be “Day 1!!”. 

8. Who inspires you today? 

People on the ground are my greatest inspiration.

They remind me of why I do what I do today. They inspire me to go through the odds, continuously run the mill, expand my horizons to learn from others, work harder and do better each day to alleviate the challenges they face on the ground.