Jamus Lim: The reality is that AI will touch every aspect of our lives

SINGAPORE: In a recent speech, Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim (Sengkang GRC) underlined the importance of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite feeling like an abstract sci-fi concept at the moment, its impact will be felt in all areas of life.

“The reality is that it will touch every aspect of our lives,” Assoc Prof Lim wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday (March 5). He added that AI will change how businesses have traditionally operated, employees work, and students learn.

“It is this indirect impact—of AI as a general purpose technology—that will upend our lives more than anything else,” he said.

For everyone to understand the effect of AI, he asked readers to imagine life without electricity, engines, phones or computers.

“The difference will be profound. This gives us a glimpse of the transformative power of AI, and we need to be aware of this.”

In his speech, he outlined the importance of incorporating AI into businesses, the workforce, and education, beginning by calling for strong incentives for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to adopt AI.

This is not an easy task since “the owner of a mama shop, renovation contractor, hawker stall, or car workshop may feel that AI has no direct implication for how they run their business, and hence prefer a ‘wait and see’ attitude toward adopting AI solutions for their company.”

Instead of only larger companies being encouraged through schemes such as Refundable Investment Credits (RIC) proposed by Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, SMEs should also be encouraged to pursue RICs “ideally through expanding outreach and promotion of the scheme.”

He added that governments should “take active exposures in AI companies,” which would allow the “public sector to enjoy a returns upside, but also to ensure that AI developments have a voice that is in the public interest.”

As for Singapore’s workforce, the MP also advocated for the scale and the scope of SkillsFuture credits to be ramped up, allowing credits to be used for alternative learning modes, such as apprenticeship programs and on-the-job training, and not just for academic credentials.

Meanwhile, with education, Assoc Prof Lim said, “AI will further erode the relevance of simply knowing more facts and figures, being the fastest at solving known problems, or being able to memorize long lists of nomenclatures and taxonomies.”

Instead, how to filter information, assess, and evaluate, should be taught to Singaporean students, as well as to foster “a deep intellectual curiosity… that instills the habits and imparts the tools necessary for critical interpretation and evaluation of data and information.”

Students need to be taught not so much what to think but how to think… This will upend many of our traditional educational strategies.” /TISG

Read also: Jamus Lim Advocates for Positive Use of Generative AI in Education