Why Singapore is urging financial firms to scale up AI for better jobs

Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong officially announced on Wednesday that Singapore's banks and financial firms need to use artificial intelligence to create better jobs and train workers for higher-value roles, rather than simply using it to cut costs.

The recent announcement comes when Standard Chartered released a major update to cut more than 7,000 jobs over the next four years, as it increasingly uses artificial intelligence. 

One of the prominent global banks has laid out plans to cut its workforce, underlining AI as a driver to make its operations streamline as it seeks to expand its profitability and remain competitive. In this connection, Gan said: “If we slow AI adoption, we will weaken our competitiveness and ultimately hurt workers more, not less.”

In line with the DBS report released at the event, Singapore ranked third among 15 AI financial hubs behind New York and San Francisco. 

It is pertinent to note that the city-state was the digital platform to combine AU capability with institutional trade at a large level. 

Gan further clarified that Singapore’s next phase as a financial hub would depend on moving AI from experimentation into company-wide implementation, ensuring it creates jobs and builds trust, and enhancing safety and security in the way AI is developed and used.

Small ⁠amplified by ​AI means our limited workforce can now ​do many more things than we could before," Tan said, adding that companies needed to take employees ​and customers along because "humans' matter".