Ong Ye Kung Calls on Businesses to Be Deliberate About AI Use
Source: FutureCIO
Health Minister Ong Ye Kung has called on Singapore businesses to take a measured approach to AI adoption, urging them to carefully weigh where to embrace the technology and where human judgment must prevail. Speaking at NCS Impact 2026, he cautioned against rushing deployment driven solely by commercial considerations, noting that regulations in healthcare and other sectors still require human oversight of AI-powered decisions.
Singapore's Health Minister Ong Ye Kung has called on businesses to take a 'deliberate' approach to artificial intelligence adoption, warning against rushing headlong into deployment without carefully weighing the consequences. Speaking at the NCS Impact 2026 conference, Ong framed the current moment as a technological inflection point where society must learn not just to use AI, but to coexist with it responsibly.
Ong emphasised that while AI can now read diagnostic scans, health regulations still require clinicians to review AI-powered analysis and provide the final diagnosis. Similarly, AI can produce movies, but most audiences still prefer films shot with real scenery and human actors. The minister argued that consumers will continue to value craft and authentic human creation, which naturally limits the extent of AI application in certain domains. He pointed to pushback in Japan against using AI to create anime cartoons as an example of this cultural resistance.
The speech comes as Singapore accelerates its national AI push under NAIS 2.0, with initiatives targeting healthcare, education, and manufacturing. Ong acknowledged that routine and process-intensive jobs such as data collation and report preparation face genuine substitution risk, and that workers in affected roles need support. Through the Skills and Workforce Development Agency, the government will provide training programmes and work with employers to ease the transition, recognising that certain roles may require new regulatory guardrails.
The minister also highlighted international examples where regulation has checked AI deployment. Autonomous vehicles in China must by law have a safety officer behind the wheel ready to intervene. Aircraft can largely fly on autopilot but international aviation regulations mandate a full pilot crew. These precedents suggest Singapore may need similar rules as AI agents become more autonomous in high-stakes settings.
Why it matters for Singapore: As one of the most proactive nations in AI adoption, Singapore's regulatory choices will set benchmarks for how smaller, highly digitised economies balance innovation with guardrails. Ong's deliberate-approach message signals that the government wants businesses to build AI fluency without treating every commercial opportunity as an automatic green light — a nuanced position that could shape how Singapore's AI governance framework evolves in the coming years.