Singapore — Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today released new research showing that when artificial intelligence (AI) is fully harnessed, Singapore workers with AI skills and expertise could see salary hikes of over 25%, with workers in IT (35%), and research and development (34%) enjoying the highest pay bumps.
To better understand emerging AI usage trends and skilling needs in APAC workplaces, AWS commissioned Access Partnership to conduct a regional study, titled “Accelerating AI Skills: Preparing the Asia-Pacific Workforce for Jobs of the Future”. Over 1,600 workers and 500 employers were surveyed in Singapore.
On top of significant salary bumps, 95% of Singapore workers expect their AI skills to have a positive impact on their careers, including increased job efficiency, improved job security, and greater job satisfaction. 87% of Singapore workers indicated an interest in developing AI skills to accelerate their careers, and this interest transcends generations 1 . While around 91% of Gen Z, 89% of Millennials, and 83% of Gen X workers want to acquire AI skills, 76% of baby boomers—a demographic usually contemplating retirement—say they would enrol in an AI upskilling course if it was offered.
The research also found that the productivity payoff from an AI-skilled workforce could be immense for Singapore. Surveyed employers expect their organization’s productivity to increase by 44% as AI technology automates repetitive tasks (68%), improves workflow and outcomes (65%), and enhances communication (62%). Workers believe AI could raise their efficiency by as much as 43%.
Singapore organizations go all-in on AI
The speed of AI transformation happening in Singapore is remarkable. 94% of employers envision their companies becoming AI-driven organizations by 2028. While most employers (91%) believe their IT department will be the biggest beneficiary, they also foresee business operations (90%), research and development (89%), finance (89%), sales and marketing (86%), legal (83%), and human resources (81%) departments driving significant value from AI too.
“The AI wave is sweeping across the Asia-Pacific region including Singapore, transforming the way businesses operate and the way we work. Our research shows that society as a whole will benefit from an increased productivity boost, which will translate into higher salaries for skilled workers,” said Abhineet Kaul, Director at Access Partnership. “With a growing number of organizations expected to deepen their use of AI solutions and tools, and the continual evolution of AI-driven innovations, there is a need for employers and governments to nurture a proficient workforce capable of steering current and future AI advancements.”
Generative AI—a type of AI that can create new content and ideas quickly, including conversations, stories, images, videos, music, and more—has captured the attention of the general public in the past year, and this technology is already transforming workplaces in Singapore. 95% of surveyed employers and 94% of workers expect to use generative AI tools on the job within the next five years, with 71% of employers highlighting ‘increasing innovation and creativity’ as the top benefit, followed by automating repetitive tasks (67%), and supporting learning (56%).
“Generative AI offers an unprecedented opportunity to transform businesses in Singapore, and this research shows that AI skills are imperative for the future workforce. From financial services to construction and retail, industries are embracing AI at a rapid pace, which is why an AI-skilled workforce is essential to unleashing a culture of innovation and driving productivity in Singapore” said Emmanuel Pillai, Head of Training and Certification for ASEAN at AWS. “At AWS, we are helping organizations, from end-to-end decarbonisation platform Terrascope, to game developers like gumi Asia, upskill their employees to be ready for a future powered by generative AI.”
Bridging Singapore’s AI skills gap is mission-critical
The research reveals a looming AI skills gap which must be bridged to ensure the region is well-positioned to unlock the full productivity benefits of AI. Hiring AI-skilled talent is a priority for over eight in ten (81%) Singapore employers, of which 74% can’t find the AI talent they need. The research also uncovers a training awareness gap, whereby 82% of employers indicated that they don’t know how to run an AI workforce training program. Meanwhile, 78% of workers said they aren’t sure about relevant career paths where AI skills are useful.
The research highlights the need for greater collaboration between governments, industries, and educators to help employers across Singapore implement AI training programs and guide workers in matching their AI skillsets to the right roles to harness their newly acquired AI capabilities.
Education institutions in Singapore play a key role in preparing students for the workplace of the future. Ngee Ann Polytechnic is working with Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority as a Training Partner to reskill about 18,000 people in tech roles over the next three years. In January 2024, Ngee Ann Polytechnic unveiled its Gen.AI Hub, established with AWS to help students explore the possibilities of generative AI, learn critical AI and cloud computing skills, and showcase their AI innovations. There, students can experience first-hand generative AI tools like Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that offers organizations a choice of high-performing foundation models, along with a broad set of capabilities needed to build generative AI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI.
Accelerating digital skills training in Singapore
AWS has trained more than 300,000 people in Singapore on cloud skills since 2017. But with the rapid adoption of cloud-enabled technologies like AI, more needs to be done to upskill the workforce at scale so organizations can innovate and grow in an AI-dominated future.
In November 2023, Amazon launched the ‘AI Ready’ initiative that complements AWS’s commitment to provide free cloud computing skills training to 29 million individuals globally by 2025. Through ‘AI Ready,’ we now offer a suite of free AI and generative AI training courses, aligned to both technical and non-technical roles, so that anyone can build AI skills. This is in addition to the more than 100 courses and learning resources on AI, machine learning, and generative AI available through AWS Skills Builder and AWS Educate—our digital learning centers for beginners to advanced learners. AWS also announced new generative AI innovations at AWS re:Invent 2023, including Amazon Q—a new generative AI assistant designed for work that can be tailored to businesses.
For more information about our “Accelerating AI Skills: Preparing the Asia Pacific Workforce for Jobs of the Future” research, download the report here.
About Amazon Web Services
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 105 Availability Zones within 33 geographic regions, with announced plans for 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
Industry, government, and AWS customers comment on the urgent need to upskill the nation with AI skills:
“AI plays a crucial role in gaming, particularly in areas such as identifying cheating players. Through AI-related training, leveraging Amazon SageMaker, and with the support of AWS, we’ve developed a prototype that uses AI to address this issue. Our goal is to build on this experience through training, especially as we venture into eSports, where the challenge becomes even more prominent,” said Simon Nishi McCorkindale, General Manager, gumi Asia.
“In Singapore, there is an increasing skills gap in artificial intelligence skills; AI-skilled talent is a priority for employers, but they are unable to meet the need for talent. As businesses accelerate transformation with artificial intelligence, education institutes are critical to ensure that today’s learners are equipped with the right skillsets for the workplace of the future. At Ngee Ann Polytechnic, we work with industry leaders like AWS to help students learn critical skills through specialized courses like the Diploma in Data Science and Specialist Diploma in Applied Generative AI. We have also established a Gen AI Hub, which allows students to use services like Amazon Bedrock to explore the possibilities that emerging technologies bring,” said Mr Patrice Choong, Senior Director (Technology, Innovation & Entrepreneurship), Ngee Ann Polytechnic
“As a cutting-edge technology company leveraging AI and machine learning for emissions data collection, monitoring, and analysis, Terrascope is working with AWS to harness generative AI to revolutionize emission calculations and reductions for our customers. Upskilling our employees in generative AI over the next few years is crucial to fostering sustainable practices and helping our customers on their pathway to Net Zero. That's why we are leveraging AWS Skill Builder and other AWS generative AI training programs to equip our team with the skills to develop innovative solutions that help our customers make sense of all of their emissions and decarbonize their business operations and supply chains with confidence,” said Mathavan Arugalaimuthu, Chief Technology Officer, Terrascope.
“This report affirms the power of AI as a driver of business transformation. As businesses continue to harness the power of AI to revolutionize the workplace and as the technology becomes increasingly integrated in our everyday lives, governments have an opportunity to steer progress through smart, forward-looking policies that positively impact the role that AI will play in shaping our shared future,” said Jeff Paine, Managing Director, Asia Internet Coalition.
“In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, upskilling workers in AI, founded on ethical frameworks and principles, is not just a strategic choice, but a critical imperative for governments and organizations across Asia-Pacific. This report shows that the future of work demands a workforce equipped with AI proficiency to navigate emerging challenges and harness opportunities for sustainable and equitable economic growth and development as well as inclusive innovation," said Dr Rupa Chanda, Director of Trade, Investment and Innovation Division, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).