Singapore aims to build AI talent pool through accelerated masters programme, visiting professorships
S$7 million will be invested in an AI Accelerated Masters Programme in collaboration with local universities. The programme will be open only to Singaporeans.

File photo of a professor teaching artificial intelligence to students in a lecture theatre. (File photo: iStock)
This audio is generated by an AI tool.
SINGAPORE: As part of moves to attract and nurture top minds in the area of artificial intelligence (AI), Singapore will launch professorships as well as a masters programme, said Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo on Friday (Mar 1).
The AI Visiting Professorship aims to attract top researchers to collaborate with Singapore, and the plan is to award it to a pilot batch of five visiting professors over the next few years, said the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI).
These professors will be required to spend at least 20 per cent of their time on these collaborations. They will also need to identify a local collaborator and will be encouraged to supervise junior researchers and students in Singapore.
“The goal is for these AI visiting professors to drive research aligned with our national AI research agenda, provide increased training opportunities for local students and catalyse additional research activities in Singapore,” said MCI.
This follows Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s announcement during his Budget 2024 speech earlier in February, that the government will invest more than S$1 billion (US$743.7 million) over the next five years in AI computing, talent and industry development.
This supports Singapore’s updated National AI Strategy (NAIS) 2.0, which was launched in December last year.
“There is no doubt that technology has become a big part of Singaporeans' daily lives,” said Mrs Teo in parliament, laying out her ministry's spending plans for the year.
"Overall, 84 per cent say that digital technologies have made their lives easier, and more than half are prepared to try new technologies."
BUILDING A TALENT “PIPELINE”
MCI on Friday also announced that S$7 million will be invested in an AI Accelerated Masters Programme (AMP), in collaboration with local universities.
Open only to Singaporeans, the plan is for the AMP to support 50 students over the next three years, added the ministry.
Applications are expected to open from March to May this year.
“The objective is to build up a pipeline of Singaporean research talent and prepare our students to either take on industry AI research jobs or enhance their competitiveness for AI PhD programmes,” said MCI.
There are also plans to level up as well as triple the pool of AI practitioners in Singapore to 15,000 over the next five years, said Mrs Teo.
These talents include data scientists and machine learning engineers, who develop and translate the use of AI in organisations across the economy.
As an initial step towards this goal, the Infocomm Media Development Authority will invest over S$20 million in the next three years to improve AI practitioner training for students.
This would fund more AI-related Singapore Digital Scholarships plus access to overseas internships in AI roles, added Mrs Teo.
The scholarships will be set aside for students with a passion to pursue a career in AI and to allow them to work in the industry after graduation.
After their studies, these scholars have the flexibility to pursue their AI career pathways in an organisation and industry of their choice in Singapore.
BUILDING UP AI INDUSTRY
Singapore is also launching a scheme for more “digitally mature” companies looking to develop and deploy their own AI solutions in their businesses, said Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Tan Kiat How on Friday.
The Generative AI X Digital Leaders initiative will partner participating enterprises with “tech giants”, allowing the latter to help these enterprises develop and implement innovative Generative AI solutions, he noted.
Generative AI uses deep-learning models that can create new content based on the past data that they were trained on.
Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Janil Puthucheary also noted the importance of Singapore having the foundational infrastructure to power AI activities.
The government will invest up to S$500 million to ensure that Singapore can have sufficient high-performance compute to support AI innovation and capacity-building, he said.
“We envisage that these resources will support use cases across sectors such as financial services, healthcare, transport and logistics,” Dr Puthucheary added.
“And over time, we hope for this seed funding to catalyse greater development and the use of AI in Singapore and spur additional industry investment in compute infrastructure."