# President Tharman at Columbia University on AI's benefits for Singapore

- Date: 2023-12-06
- Who: Tharman Shanmugaratnam (President of Singapore) · Columbia SIPA
- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsCVAN4QG3w
- sgai: https://sgai.md/videos/v029/
- License: sgai-authored content (summaries, translations, analysis) is CC BY 4.0 — attribute and link to sgai.md. Verbatim source text (Hansard, speeches, transcripts, policy documents) remains © its original rights holders and is reproduced for reference only. Terms: https://github.com/meltflake/sgai/blob/main/DATA-LICENSE.md

## Why it matters

Tharman Shanmugaratnam publicly championed Singapore's AI strategy at Columbia University, positioning it as the world's fastest adopter rather than a model developer, addressing the population gap

## Summary

At Columbia University's World Leaders Forum, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam speaks on AI's positive impact on Singapore's workforce and economy.

## Key points

- Tharman calls AI a big net plus for Singapore.
- Singapore's coordination across government, business, unions and community lets it organise the skills of the future.
- AI fills gaps in a labour-short economy, including roles like coding.

## Full text

© Columbia SIPA — reproduced for reference only.

My sense is that AI will be a big net plus for Singapore. We're a small society and we've got a way of organizing ourselves between government, businesses, unions and individuals of the community such that you can reach every individual you can reach every individual available to them, new clauses or modules that give them new skills and keep people moving in their careers so we can organize the skills of the future. And in fact, we intend to do so. Second, Singapore, short of people and AI is actually an enabler when you're short of people because it replaces many jobs that Singaporeans are not particularly keen on doing or not very good at doing either. We don't have enough people doing coding and programing, for instance, in AI is taking over the world of coding, coding and programing. Just to give you an example.

Thirdly, I think the pace of change is just going to the pace of innovation is going to increase in every sector because of AI and what Singapore's real strength has to be as a society and an economy is to be one of the places in the world where you can very quickly adopt the latest innovations.