Mr Speaker, today’s motion rightly recognises the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and affirms that AI-enabled economic growth must remain inclusive.
My speech consists of three broad points. First, we must protect the economic positions of workers and prevent the economic fruits of AI from accruing solely to those who own the AI models or produce the hardware powering AI. Second, we must ensure that AI-resilient employment pathways remain viable for Singaporeans.
Third, and most importantly, we must hold firm to the idea that technology should always serve humanity, not the other way around. Because ultimately, the goal is not just growth without joblessness. It is growth without losing who we are as humans and as Singaporeans.
Sir, the second limb of the motion statement calls upon the House to emphasise that Singapore’s approach to AI-enabled growth must be anchored in fairness, resilience, and opportunity for all, while the fourth limb asks the House to affirm that economic progress must remain inclusive, and that Singapore must not have jobless growth.
These are extremely important goals, because if the rise of AI is not managed properly, it could represent not just technological disruption, but a recalibration of power between labour and capital.
For example, last month, Meta announced that the keystrokes and workflows of every one of its employees in the US will be recorded. Screenshots will also be taken occasionally throughout the workday. All these data will form datasets used to train AI systems that could, one day, replace these employees. Other companies could follow suit soon.
While this is being done in the US, we in Singapore should ask whether companies such as Meta should be allowed to harvest employee data in this way without any clear safeguards. Should there not be stronger protections around how such data is collected and used, and should workers not have a stake in the value created from their own data?
If we fail to address these questions, we risk sleepwalking into a future where wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few technology giants who increasingly use AI to take over work previously done by their human employees.
These firms will continue to be the engine of economic growth, investing in larger and larger data centres and more powerful semiconductor chips that continue to generate GDP growth. As a country, Singapore may benefit through our shareholdings in, and partnerships with, these tech companies.
However, we must ensure that these benefits, which primarily accrue to the capital owners, do not come at the expense of the labour force. These developments pose a real risk that workers who are replaced may see their economic power steadily eroded, with a larger number of workers having to chase after a smaller pool of lower-paying jobs.
I don’t mean to be alarmist in suggesting that, if unchecked, what could emerge is a form of “digital serfdom”: a system where workers, like serfs of old, are bound not by land or feudal lords, but by algorithms.
We are already seeing the beginnings of this future play out in real time. Already, platform workers work in service to black-box algorithms that have a great deal of control over their earnings and how many hours they work. As AI advances, many cognitive and white-collar jobs will become increasingly automated and possibly under the control of algorithms. Roles once considered secure may no longer be so.
As such, we need to strengthen frameworks for worker protection in areas such as retrenchment benefits and the rights of workers over the data they create at the workplace. AI-enabled growth must not come at the cost of workers and a further tilting of the balance of economic power towards capital owners.
Sir, the third limb of the motion asks the House to resolve to equip and support workers and enterprises to seize new opportunities and advance together.
Even as AI threatens to automate and replace many existing roles, there remain many forms of labour that are difficult to automate using AI. For example, plumbers, electricians, air-con technicians, phlebotomists, and other skilled trades have been assessed to be much less likely to be replaced by AI.
These jobs are essential pillars of a functioning society. Yet for too long, we in Singapore have undervalued these roles, both economically and socially. If we are serious about ensuring that growth remains inclusive, we must correct this imbalance.
In many other First World societies, the job of a plumber, garbage collector, or an air-con technician pay high enough to allow a middle-class lifestyle. This is not the case in Singapore.
We have made a policy choice to fill these roles with lower-paid foreign workers while our local workers are channelled into high-paying white-collar jobs. While this has worked well for us for decades, this may no longer be sustainable as generative AI threatens to reduce the number of well-paying white-collar cognitive roles.
We must therefore raise wages and improve career pathways in blue-collar sectors that are currently less attractive and yet also less vulnerable to displacement by AI. We must elevate their status, not just through policy, but through culture and education, so that Singaporeans no longer see such jobs as undesirable.
This may require difficult trade-offs. For example, should we recalibrate our policies in certain sectors to ensure that wages for local skilled trades rise meaningfully, and attract more Singaporeans to fill these roles?
At the same time, we must make better use of our strong vocational institutions. Our ITEs and polytechnics should guide more students towards specialised, high-value trades.
In an AI-driven future, the dignity of work must not be tied solely to whether a job is “white-collar” or “high-tech”. We must expand the range of jobs that Singaporeans consider attractive and meaningful.
Mr Speaker, AI will undeniably determine the future of our economy, our society, and our lives. But we should not allow AI to come to define us as humans, as citizens, and as Singaporeans.
I say this because the question before us is not merely whether AI will create or destroy jobs. The deeper question is this: what kind of society, and what kind of human beings, will we become in an age shaped by artificial intelligence? Because, Sir, if we are not careful, we may succeed economically, yet diminish ourselves in more fundamental ways.
For example, AI has created a world where knowledge is no longer scarce. Text can be summarised, essays can be written, and equations can be solved in seconds. I spoke before about my own experience as an undergraduate, struggling through dense texts. It was slow, often frustrating work. But it was through that struggle that I learned how to think, how to question, and how to make sense of the world.
Today, however, the effort required to complete any cognitive activity has collapsed, to an extent far greater than when the calculator replaced the abacus or the typewriter replaced the pen.
In encouraging our students to leverage AI, how can we ensure that they can continue to learn how to grapple with ideas, how to formulate arguments, how to problem solve, and how to cultivate intellectual independence?
Sir, I reiterate my caution that Singapore must become an AI-resilient society, not an AI-reliant one. By constantly outsourcing tasks to AI, we may erode or undermine our capacities for creativity, imagination, judgment, and even empathy, or let these practical skills atrophy from lack of use.
The danger here is the temptation to use AI as a shortcut for thinking through or solving problems.
On the one end, there are those who regard AI as a kind of “second brain”, outsourcing memory, decision-making, and even aspects of judgment to ChatGPT or Claude. It is true that AI tools can sharpen our thinking and serve as intellectual aids. However, in creating a layer of artificial mediation between us and the world, I am concerned that AI would dull our own capacity to make sense of the world.
By making sense of the world I mean the ability to interpret, comprehend, and coherently perceive the world around us on our own terms, through our own cognitive efforts, and oftentimes this would involve reflective trial and error, balancing our considered interpretations and judgments of the world with how the world comes to bear upon us.
Interpretation and judgment are practical skills that must be honed through constant and regular use, and we develop these skills by exercising, testing, and challenging them. Making judgments about the world, and what should be done, is a distinctively human task that should not be easily surrendered.
I am not against the idea of a “second brain”. My worry is more specific: that the reliance on a “second brain”, left unchecked, will weaken the acuity and reflexes of the “first brain”.
On the other end, we see people forming emotional attachments with AI companions. These are relationships that simulate empathy, but do not truly reciprocate it. It demonstrates the real risk that people can lose sight of human relationships in the real world.
If people see these AI companions as a comforting ‘shortcut’ to finding companionship in contrast to the ‘hard work’ of developing friendships with others around us, we may see a further impoverishment of our social networks.
In both cases, the danger is the same: we begin to substitute authentic human experience, sense-making, and judgment with artificial approximations. And when that happens, we may gradually lose our ability to navigate the world with clarity on our own terms.
Tuan, satu perkara terakhir. Saya amat minati sebentuk seni Melayu tradisional iaitu pantun, satu bentuk puisi yang mempunyai peraturan tersendiri. Terdiri daripada empat baris, pantun mempunyai meter dan rentak yang khusus. Imej biasanya diambil daripada alam semula jadi dan pemandangan kehidupan seharian, bagi menyampaikan nilai-nilai sosial dan nasihat yang penting.
Pantun yang tidak mengikuti struktur dan konvensyen ini biasanya tidak dianggap sebagai pantun yang baik, malah boleh dipersoalkan sama ada ia layak digelar pantun langsung.
Banyak pantun masih dihayati oleh masyarakat Melayu, diwarisi secara lisan dari generasi ke generasi. Ringkasnya, pantun merangkumi satu tradisi menghubungkan orang Melayu hari ini dengan nenek moyang kita yang terdahulu.
Oleh itu, saya ingin bertanya: adakah kita kehilangan sesuatu yang berharga sekiranya kita mengajar pelajar-pelajar kita menggunakan AI untuk menjana pantun, berbanding membiarkan mereka sendiri merasai keseronokan bereksperimen dengan baris-baris tersebut?
Adakah kemahiran menggunakan AI untuk menjana pantun semestinya membuahkan kemahiran menulis pantun yang baik, atau bahkan kepekaan estetika untuk menghargai bentuk seni ini?
Lagi penting, apakah kesan jangka panjang terhadap bahasa, budaya, dan tradisi Melayu kita apabila satu motif budaya diwarisi turun-temurun direduksi kepada sekadar output AI?
Sir, a final point. There is a traditional Malay art form that is close to my heart: the pantun. This is a poetic form with its own specific rules. Made up of four lines, a pantun has a specific meter and rhyme scheme. Imagery is usually drawn from nature and scenes of everyday life, to communicate important social values and advice. A pantun that does not follow these structures and conventions is usually not regarded as a good pantun, if it may be called one at all.
Many pantuns are still known among Malays by heart, passed down orally through generations. In short, the pantun embodies a tradition — connecting the Malays today to our forefathers before.
Hence, I want to ask: do we lose something valuable if we teach students to use AI to generate pantuns, rather than discovering the fun of experimenting with the lines themselves?
More importantly, does the skill of using AI to generate pantuns necessarily translate into the craft of writing a good pantun, or even the aesthetic sensibility to appreciate the art form?
And what is the long-term impact to the Malay language, culture, and tradition when a cultural motif is reduced to an AI output?
Sir, I am not suggesting that we return to a time before AI use. We have to adapt. But we need discernment. We must be clear-sighted about what AI can and cannot offer, and always ask what purpose AI is serving, and whether it is fit for that task.
We must avoid being boxed-in into an “AI-centric gaze”, in which we are left with a narrow and artificially-mediated understanding of reality, and an impoverished capacity to make sense of and relate to the world and those around us.
Sir, let me close my speech with a pantun:
Di dewan parliamen bila berpantun
Eloklah jangan gunakan AI
Orang Melayu sopan dan santun
Ilham pujangga takkan diabai
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Translation:
Sir, a final point. There is a traditional Malay art form that is close to my heart: the pantun. This is a poetic form with its own specific rules. Made up of four lines, a pantun has a specific meter and rhyme scheme. Imagery is usually drawn from nature and scenes of everyday life, to communicate important social values and advice. A pantun that does not follow these structures and conventions is usually not regarded as a good pantun, if it may be called one at all.
Many pantuns are still known among Malays by heart, passed down orally through generations. In short, the pantun embodies a tradition — connecting the Malays today to our forefathers before.
Hence, I want to ask: do we lose something valuable if we teach students to use AI to generate pantuns, rather than discovering the fun of experimenting with the lines themselves?
More importantly, does the skill of using AI to generate pantuns necessarily translate into the craft of writing a good pantun, or even the aesthetic sensibility to appreciate the art form?
And what is the long-term impact to the Malay language, culture, and tradition when a cultural motif is reduced to an AI output?
When delivering a pantun in Parliament
It’s best not to use AI
The Malays are cultured and courteous
The poet’s inspiration will not be abandoned
