LocationsAI for Public Good: From Vision to Action and Innovation
January 27, 2025
Vision of AI as a Force for Good
The Global Digital Compact, adopted by world leaders at the Summit of the Future, underscore the collective vision of harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI)’s immense potential to accelerate progress across all Sustainable Development Goals, while addressing potential risks and ensuring shared benefits to countries and communities.
Globally, more than 70 countries and territories have put forward national AI policies and strategies to leverage AI’s potential. UNDP is also working in more than 170 countries and territories to support the development of enabling environments – including policy, skills, and infrastructure – to leverage AI for sustainable development, as well as partnering countries to conduct AI Landscape Assessments to map their AI ecosystems and raise their local AI readiness.
In 2023, Singapore put forward its National AI Strategy (NAIS) 2.0 following extensive consultations, exemplifying a forward-thinking vision of applying AI for the Public Good, for Singapore and the World – to empower people and address societal needs.
Adapted from NAIS 2.0, pages 13-15
AI in Action to Accelerate Development
Positive strides are underway globally to translate the vision into concrete actions applying AI to accelerate sustainable development. UNDP continues supporting countries in building AI ecosystems, strengthening AI capabilities, and implementing AI solutions for people and planet, including via the AI Hub for Sustainable Development launched with G7 Presidency to work with countries in Africa across data infrastructure, green computational power, talent development, and enabling ecosystems.
Singapore offers a compelling case study on translating vision into actionable outcomes. The Ministry of Digital Development and Information’s National AI Group (NAIG) and Government Technology Agency (GovTech) are spearheading efforts to apply AI in enabling a more effective and efficient Public Service, across three broad focus areas:
- Broad-based Adoption to make every Public Officer a “technologist” by equipping them with a suite of central AI Tools like Pair Chat (a secure, versatile chatbot) and Transcribe (a speech-to-text productivity platform) to improve general productivity.
- Domain Transformation to enable transformative use cases, and reimagine traditional workflows, across specialized domains such as education and service delivery. For example, the Ministry of Education’s Adaptive Learning System provides a personalised learning pathway for each student. In the maritime sector, DocuMind enables automated data extraction of complex maritime documents at scale.
- Building Ecosystem Capabilities, including a culture AI innovation and experimentation through the LaunchPad collaboration platform and regular Ideathons (an avenue for government agencies to gather user needs), hackathons and incubators under the “LAUNCH! Programme”.
Singapore has also applied AI to deliver faster and better quality public services for people and communities, such as the OneService chatbot enabling residents to convey and receive information with the government via commonly used social messaging apps. Where actions are required, the 24/7 AI-powered chatbot extracts relevant details to inform the relevant government agencies supporting faster responses.
AI Innovations for Public Good
Significant potential lies in partnering with community and industry stakeholders to develop innovative AI use cases that address local needs and challenges. UNDP’s Accelerator Labs across 115 countries partner with local stakeholders on impactful AI use cases, such as to analyse earth observation data (satellite data and drone data) to detect crop diseases (Cameroon and Cabo Verde) or areas of accumulated waste (Guatemala, the Philippines, Serbia and Viet Nam), and to generate land use and cover maps (Ecuador and India).
In Singapore, GovTech has been driving such AI innovations through its LAUNCH! Hackathon series, as well as a high-intensity hackathon where about 100 developers pit their wits to build AI prototypes in public industries like education, linguistics, professional development, healthcare, senior citizen assistance, government services and information accessibility.
Other notable AI innovations include:
- A hotline that allows users, like the elderly with limited digital literacy, to submit cases and feedback on municipal issues with two-way communications in the local languages and dialects that the users are most conversant in.
- An interactive, game-based platform to enhance language education for primary school students in Singapore, by making the learning process more engaging while tailoring to individuals’ proficiency and interests.
- A chatbot to support medical patients’ transition from hospital care to home-based recovery by reminding users to take their medication at the right time, answering any questions they may have about their prescriptions, and reporting feedback and urgent matters to their doctors.
Through human-centred vision, impactful implementation, and collaborative innovation, we can harness the potential of AI to accelerate sustainable development globally and shape a more inclusive future for all. To find out more on the LaunchPad collaboration platform and GovTech’s role in driving AI innovations for public good in Singapore, please contact launch@tech.gov.sg.