Singapore's S$1 billion AI investment over the next five years is fuelling innovation and growth. Discover how three companies in healthcare, consumer research, and gaming leveraged AI to boost productivity and efficiency through the AI Trailblazers initiative.
The use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) can help businesses solve real-world challenges and make them more productive. Last year, the Singapore government and Google Cloud launched AI Trailblazers, an initiative to accelerate AI adoption across the government and industries.
Over six months, 84 organisations, across the public and private sectors, were given access to Singapore’s first Gen AI Innovation Sandboxes.
Through these Innovation Sandboxes, organisations were given access to a suite of advanced Gen AI tools from Google Cloud at no cost to develop production-ready Gen AI solutions – these tools included high-performance Cloud Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), Vertex AI platform, foundation models, and low-code developer tools.
What is the AI Trailblazers initiative?
A joint AI initiative between the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), Digital Industry Singapore (DISG), Smart Nation Group (SNG) and Google Cloud, designed to help organisations in Singapore identify real-world challenges that can be addressed with Gen AI, build Gen AI-powered solution prototypes, and bring these prototypes to production.
Learn more about the AI Trailblazers initiative here
Why participate?
Under the second Innovation Sandbox, administered by DISG, companies get access to generative AI toolsets to build, test and create their own Gen AI solutions, at no cost for up to three months. These tools include:
Take a look at these three companies and their solutions:
ABOUT GSK
The Jurong manufacturing site for global biopharma company GSK in Singapore convened a team of six members with expertise in Data Science and Tech, to take part in the AI Trailblazers Initiative.
AI MISSION/PROBLEM STATEMENT
GSK Jurong identified two problems that Gen AI tools designed via AI Trailblazers could potentially solve. Firstly, it needed a solution to retrieve information efficiently from a vast pool of documents. The second was to extract meaningful insights from a multitude of data points collected during the manufacturing process.
THE AI TRAILBLAZER DIFFERENCE
Gen AI provided the flexibility and intelligence needed to comprehend diverse data formats and automate content generation. The initiative helped in the exploration of two prototypes; one in the form of an intelligent GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) assistant to enhance decision-making among the workforce by sifting through vast amounts of text data from various pharmaceutical procedures, work instructions, and historical plant data.
An Investigation Report Maker was also developed with the objective to speed up the process of compiling comprehensive deviation investigation reports.
Regular technical check-ins with Google Cloud engineers and partners provided crucial inputs, helped overcome challenges, and drove the development forward efficiently. This collaboration not only ensured the timely realisation of the project goals but also brought in diverse perspectives to refine the prototypes.
THE OUTCOMES
Based on testing the prototypes developed through the AI Trailblazers programme , insights showed remarkable improvements in efficiency with savings of 450 man-days —with its GMP assistant— and 5,000 man-days per year for its Report Maker tool, along with improved data retrieval and accelerated report production.
Such promising results further ignited a newfound appreciation and understanding of Gen AI's potential for the GSK Team. It opened avenues for further exploration and development of AI-based solutions, building upon the successes of the initial prototypes and setting the stage for transformative advances in the pharmaceutical industry.
“This programme has sparked our interest and forged a better understanding of the possibilities of Gen AI. This potentially includes exploring other variations built upon the early prototype within our own organisation,” said GSK Jurong’s Data Scientist Sherlyn Liow.
ABOUT ETHLAS
Founded in 2022 and based in Singapore, Ethlas is a blockchain gaming startup that builds games, gaming infrastructure and tools for Web3. Their team of six that participated in the AI Trailblazers initiative comprised tech and business specialists.
AI MISSION/PROBLEM STATEMENT
The gaming industry is constrained by headcount and limited design resources, even as it seeks to produce fresh content for gamers to enhance their experience. While there is appetite among the gaming community to create their own content, not everyone is skilled in using game development tools. Ethlas wanted to find a way to utilise Gen AI to encourage more User-Generated Content (UGC), so that all gamers can exercise their creativity even if they are not professional designers.
THE AI TRAILBLAZER DIFFERENCE
This collaboration with Google Cloud boosted Ethlas’ generative AI capabilities, especially by providing access to powerful Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) for more efficient design iterations. GPU testing was a critical step, proving scalability and deployment feasibility. Additionally, the Ethlas team participated in Demo Day, which offered valuable validation and feedback from Google experts, leading to significant improvements in user engagement and interface enhancements
What is Demo Day?
Short for Demonstration Day, AI teams from participating organisations come together to demonstrate their Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to a panel of technology experts from government agencies, and Google Cloud. The panel will evaluate these MVPs based on design, usability, reliability, functionality, and propensity for real-world application. It is also meant to help companies ensure they are on track to creating a real usable prototype.
THE OUTCOMES
Utilising Google's Vertex AI for deploying and managing their fine-tuned models, Ethlas has simplified the creation of game-ready assets for users, enabling a more efficient and tailored content development process.
This integration significantly decreased the time it takes for Ethlas to gain valuable insights from data, enabling faster analysis, prediction generation, and understanding of key insights. This accelerated process has led to quicker decision-making and improved responsiveness to changing business requirements and market trends, establishing Ethlas as a more flexible and innovative player in the gaming industry.
Said Neaton Ang, the Data Scientist helming Ethlas’ AI Portal: “As a startup, being able to leverage Gen AI is like having an army of designers. Our design outputs aren’t limited by our headcount, but by the relevance of our prompts and imagination".
ABOUT AI PALETTE
Ai Palette harnesses AI and machine learning to help consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies with new product development. It utilises proprietary technology to scan millions of data points from 24 countries to identify emerging trends, drivers and motivations so that consumer brands can create products to serve unmet needs.
AI MISSION / PROBLEM STATEMENT
CPG companies invest over US$19 billion (S$25.7b) annually in market research, yet inefficiencies and long timelines plague the industry. Ai Palette wanted a tool that could revolutionise processes in the industry and speed up market research and new product development from 12 to 24 months to mere weeks, while leveraging broader consumer data.
THE AI TRAILBLAZERS DIFFERENCE
Through Google Cloud’s developer tools such as Vertex AI, Ai Palette experimented with and iterated possible use cases and solutions with ease, significantly reducing costs and time.
Ai Palette’s AI-powered tools developed as part of this initiative, like Foresight Engine and Concept Genie, predict trends, generate new product concepts, and virtually validate them in real-time. “The programme’s access to high-performance computing resources and advanced AI models significantly accelerates our development process and enables us to expedite our efforts to create a fully integrated solution,” said Dolly Agarwal, a data scientist at Ai Palette.
With access to Google Cloud’s engineers and partners as part of the sandbox, Ai Palette received the necessary hands-on support to speed up problem solving and enhance the team’s expertise and capabilities.
THE OUTCOME
Ai Palette achieved remarkable productivity gains, with company executives estimating that they took 90 per cent less time to conduct thorough market research. By providing insights more quickly, they significantly shortened the timelines of their clients’ concept-to-launch journey.
Your company can follow in the footsteps of these trailblazers to use the power of Gen AI to deliver value-added services and products that will reshape the future or innovate solutions to boost your company’s operational resilience and efficiency!
More details will be announced in the coming weeks but you can express your early interest in participating in Trailblazers 2.0 here.
