Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Introduction
2 It is a pleasure to be here with you in Casablanca for the tenth edition of this remarkable conference. Ten years is a significant milestone, and it is a testament to Casablanca's commitment to building a truly inclusive smart city. Singapore is proud to be part of this conversation.
3 For some time now, Morocco and Singapore have been building a relationship deeper than the distance between us might suggest. Despite being separated by continents, our ties are meaningful.
a. In Singapore, TWG tea and Bacha coffee are well-known premium brands owned by a Moroccan.
b. And in both our countries, Islam and modernity do not clash. We have embraced progress, while keeping to our faith. This is of particularly important to the Muslims in Singapore, minorities who make up 15% of the population.
c. This shared understanding of faith and life has opened new doors. In fact, Singaporean students studying religion in Fez and Rabat are in growing numbers, to study in prestigious universities like Qarawiyyin.
d. And the Vice-President of Qarawiyyin University, Prof Driss Fassi Fihri himself is one of the many distinguished scholars sitting on the International Advisory Board for the new Singapore College of Islamic Studies. Some Singaporean companies are indeed among here with us and I hope to meet them afterwards.
4 Now, our two cities, Singapore and Casablanca, share more in common than one might expect. Like Casablanca, Singapore has been on a deliberate journey to build a city that leads, rather than merely keeping pace with the times. The Casablanca Smart City 2026 conference we’re holding now and Singapore’s World City Summit are organised just three days apart this week. Two cities, on opposite sides of the world, asking the same fundamental question: how can technology be placed in service of our people?
5 In Singapore, we launched our Smart Nation strategy in 2014, and two years ago, we took that vision further with Smart Nation 2.0. This was our renewed commitment to ensuring that the benefits of digitalisation and AI reach every corner of our society.
a. But I must confess: even as we were busy implementing rapid digitalisation in 2014, there were already those in Morocco who were thinking further ahead. I speak of none other than my dear friend and teacher, Professor Aawatif Hayar. She had then already developed a framework she called the AI-Powered Frugal Social CCPS Innovation Process. While Singapore was focused on going digital, she was already thinking about AI. It is a reminder that wisdom and vision do not belong to any one country or city. We have much to learn from one another.
6 In her work, it prompts an important question: what does it truly mean for a city, and a nation, to be smart?
7 We can build networks that span entire countries, systems that process vast amounts of data in seconds. But the answer is not found in any of these things alone. The true measure of a smart city lies not in the sophistication of its technology, but in the quality of life it delivers to every resident, including the most vulnerable among us. It must be felt in the lives of every family; of the young person when they find support when they need it most, and for the elderly resident who is cared for even before a crisis develops.
8 That is the conviction that has guided Singapore's journey, and it is what I hope to share with you today. I want to speak about what we have learnt, and why we believe that the smartest thing any city can do is to keep on learning, and place our people at the centre of what we do.
A push for technology and AI in Singapore
9 Singapore's ambition has always been to be among the world's leading cities. Not merely in economic terms, but as a place where our people can live with meaning and dignity. We recognised early on that this would require us to embrace technology. Not selectively, but systematically.
10 It was that conviction that gave rise to our Smart Nation ambitions in 2014, to be a nation where technology was used to improve our citizens’ lives. Let me give you some flavours of where we are today.
a. Filing taxes, renewing passports, applying for public housing schemes, and receiving government assistance are all done digitally. No more queues. No more paper forms.
b. Sensors in lifts and water pumps send alerts, and repairs are done before residents are inconvenienced.
c. Singaporeans today enjoy passport-less immigration clearance – no passport, when they enter or leave Singapore.
11 This kind of convenience is enjoyed in the town of Tampines, of 290,000 people where I serve as a Member of Parliament.
a. Tampines is a town that won the United Nations’ World Habitat Award in 1992.
b. In 2014, we broke ground on Our Tampines Hub — Singapore's first and largest integrated community and lifestyle hub. To get a feel of what a community hub is like, let me show you a video of the hub.
c. As part of the Smart Nation initiative, residents in Tampines can access over 400 services from 20 agencies, in a centralised Public Service Centre at Our Tampines Hub. Mostly digital and for seniors, there is help to do so.
d. Using video and data analytics, we ascertain the number of visitors that come to and through the Hub, including by gender, age, and race. We could even tell how long they would visit each area for. This helped us to determine which events attracted what demography.
e. Together with these tools, events, and facilities, we have reached 1.4 million footfall monthly in Our Tampines Hub.
12 Ladies and gentlemen, even at this stage we recognised that we could not stand still. The breakthroughs in AI in recent years have fundamentally shifted what is possible thus the Smart Nation 2.0 strategy, which we launched in 2024, reflects our approach for this new reality.
a. Across government, our work on stewarding digital developments is anchored on a clear mission - to improve people’s lives and to help people thrive through the use of technology.
b. To achieve this, we refreshed our approach to the next bound of Smart Nation, and identified three key goals: building a Smart Nation that is trustworthy, that fosters growth, and that strengthens our social fabric.
c. Our efforts to achieve these goals are wide-ranging. And of course, we refreshed advisory guidelines to enhance the security and resilience of digital infrastructure that underpins our digital economy. For seniors and parents too, we published guidelines for parents who are part of children growing up, with digital wellness. I have some copies with me, and if you are interested, please take it from me.
d. Building on our National AI Strategy, the National AI Impact Programme supports, firstly, our enterprises in transforming their processes with AI. Secondly, we help our workers to become AI Bilinguals – domain experts who can apply AI and be pathfinders for deeper transformation in their organisations. To do so, we provide our workers ample opportunities to learn about AI or even pivot to AI. They are funded to upgrade their skills through the SkillsFuture fund. This fund provides them from $500 to $4000 to offset the fees of courses. They are also provided with access to premium AI tools free for six months when they sign up for qualifying AI courses. In fact, if you are above 40, you can use $4000 to go back to school to obtain a refreshed diploma, and on top of that, the government will pay half your salary for two years.
AI for social services
13 Ladies and gentlemen, as we leap into the future with AI, I worry that we will all leave one sector behind. And that is the social sector. The reason is simple: it rarely returns a profit. But what we often fail to account for is the caregiver, freed to re-enter the workforce; the person with a disability, for example, who can now contribute in ways previously closed to them. These are not soft outcomes — these are the measure of a society's true wealth.
14 It is my conviction that AI for social services remains one of the most consequential and underexplored frontiers of our time. For this I see three areas we must go further in.
a. The first is research and development (R&D). For companies, as you develop AI innovations, ask how we might extend this to serve those on the margins. The most meaningful application of your work may be the one you have not yet considered that can be extended to better the quality of lives of the vulnerable and the disabled.
b. The second is scale. Governments must take the lead — funding and pushing for AI to be directed towards social good. Even so, in the social sector, developing AI solutions for small populations in isolation lacks the economies of scale needed to drive progress. No government nor country can do this alone. The answer lies in forging collaborations that bring communities together across borders. When we pool our efforts, we multiply our impact.
c. The third is collaboration. So much is already happening in so many places. But so much of it does not yet know about the rest. We must bring ideas from communities and innovations from businesses together. What innovations, brought together, could achieve far more than either could alone? This is a question we should be asking far more often.
15 AI for the social sector is not a distant dream. It is happening today. And I have had the privilege of witnessing it firsthand – solutions that improves lives, especially for Persons with Disabilities.
a. In Switzerland, I saw motorised wheelchairs capable of navigating and ascending staircases, with researchers now working to enable autonomous navigation through crowds. Alongside them, exoskeletons are being developed to support those who need a little more strength to walk, climb stairs, or navigate uneven terrain — using AI to quickly learn the gait of the wearer.
b. In China, I encountered AI-powered glasses designed specially for the hearing-impaired. These glasses render a speaker’s words as real-time captions, in the wearer's field of vision, filtering out noise. Other innovations translate the speech of hearing-impaired individuals so that they can be easily understood, because they speak with a deaf accent.
c. For those who have lost their limbs, prosthetics have been developed which could translate electrical commands sent by the brain through the nervous system. Using AI, the prosthesis interprets these nerve patterns and initiates the intended actions, just like the $6 million bionic man I watched as a child.
16 Whether for the deaf, the blind, the wheelchair user, or the person with special needs — the innovation is real. It is accelerating. It is changing lives.
17 I invite you to imagine a different kind of world in the new smart city — one where those born with disabilities do not have to carry the limitations as a permanent condition. Where technology does not merely make life more convenient for those who already have much. It restores possibility to those who have been told they have less.
Framework for AI for social services
18 Ladies and gentlemen, let me make one last point. As we chart the path forward, I know that there is a background of worry that AI will replace us and our jobs. In Singapore, this is no different. Disruptions will happen. But I believe governments have a role to make AI a force for good that will be embraced by professionals. I want to offer a frame that I believe could guide our work in AI for social services.
a. During a visit to ETH Zurich, I came across a schematic I found deeply insightful in producing AI solutions. Their framework involves the client, the caregiver and the professionals.
b. In many of our countries, families are the bedrock of society. However, often the approach to social services where client-centricity is a linear one. It is focused on the individual client, programmatic in nature, and concludes once intervention ends. But our clients do not return to a vacuum. They return to a family. Any solution that does not account for this – that is, one that deals only with the individual and not the family – is incomplete. The family must be integral to the solution, not peripheral to it. The role of the facilitator is to bring the individual back to this core support network – the family – and also needs help to do so.
c. This has direct implications for how we think about AI. AI does not replace the facilitator, who could be a social worker, a counsellor, or a therapist. It must be designed to enhance the work of the professionals, to be effective for both the individual and their families. Just as AI imaging has transformed radiology — enabling doctors to detect what the naked eye might miss and save lives that might otherwise have been lost — AI in social services can sharpen the facilitator's insight and deepen their impact. The human remains at the centre. Technology simply makes them better at what they do. Not replace them.
Conclusion
19 We live in an age of extraordinary technological possibility. But the question that should excite all of us — as professionals, policymakers, and city leaders — is not what AI can do. It is what we choose to do with it.
20 These efforts must happen not only at the national-level, but we must also think about how to make these changes within our communities and towns. Which is why, later this month, we will bring an AI exhibition directly to Tampines residents. We will be gathering companies to showcase their innovations in the community, for the community. Because we believe that the best way to demystify AI is not to ask people to seek it out, but to bring it to where they already are. When a resident can see, touch, and ask questions about AI in their own neighbourhood, it ceases to be something abstract or intimidating. And it is something that belongs to them, something they can see as part of their daily lives.
21 I look forward to deeper collaboration with Casablanca, with Morocco and with everyone in the room, and to work together with the belief that we should make bolder investment in AI for social good, with the unwavering conviction that the smartest thing any city can do is, first and always, to keep learning, and to put people at the centre of what we do first.
22 Thank you.