SINGAPORE (Sept 26): Singapore has clinched the top spot among 105 cities in terms of its preparedness to deal with digital disruption, according to the Cities AI Disruption Index published Thursday by the Oliver Wyman Forum.

Singapore showed the most readiness overall, with an average score of 75.8 across all four categories identified as critical for success in meeting the increased speed and scope of technology disruption brought by artificial intelligence.

The other top 10 cities on the Readiness Index are London (75.6), New York (72.7), San Francisco (71.9), Paris (71.0), Stockholm (70.4), Amsterdam (68.6), Boston (68.5), Berlin (67.3), and Sydney (67.3).

The index ranks cities on four categories: vision, activation, asset base, and trajectory.

These measure the quality of a city’s plan; its ability to carry out forward-looking plans (activation); the quality of its talent, education, and infrastructure; and whether it is becoming better aligned with what it needs to succeed in the future.

Singapore’s chart-topping score was well above the average overall score of 52.4 and median overall score of 54.8.

However, a deeper dive into the four assessment vectors reveals that Singapore owes its pole position to just one factor: its strong and compelling vision for the future.

In contrast, the city state fared modestly in its  asset base, development and activation scores - ranking 10th, 23rd and 25th in the respective segments.

The disparity has raised an important question: Is a strong vision alone enough for Singapore to weather the storms of digital disruption that lay ahead?

<strong>Singapore’s potential stumbling blocks</strong>

Singapore’s near-perfect score of 98.4 for the vision category was miles ahead of the 85.0 points scored by second-place Dubai. It was also more than double the average score of 46.8 for the category.

According to Timocin Pervane, a partner at Oliver Wyman and co-leader of the Oliver Wyman Forum’s City Readiness initiative, this indicates that stakeholders in Singapore recognise the potential opportunities and risks, and have a clear and compelling vision for the future.

The index also found that large cities tend to have superior asset bases while small cities have stronger visions, which may position them strongly for the future.

However, Singapore fell short in other vectors. The city state ranked 10th in terms of asset base, 23rd in development and trajectory, and 25th in activation.

“Most cities plan to use AI to become ‘smart cities’ or the next Silicon Valley, but few focus on the bigger, strategic challenge of people being forced to look for new work as a result of the broad deployment of AI,” says Pervane.

He notes that, interestingly, no city was among the top 20 in all four categories. Also, no city was ranked in the top 10 in more than two categories.

“While Singapore is one of the leaders in the development of AI solutions, we must keep in mind that AI requires access to large data sets for machine learning. Since Singapore is a small country, it has less access to data resources,” says Randeep Sudan, a board advisor at technology research firm Ecosystm.

“Where Singapore leads the most is not just in actual solution deployments but in creating a framework where organisations can experiment and deploy emerging technologies safely,” he adds.

<strong>Labour disruption ‘inevitable’</strong>

Oliver Wyman’s study also highlights that, despite the promising prospects of AI, not all impact brought about by the disruption will be positive.

For instance, Asian cities are the most confident in their government’s vision for technological change and the positive impact of AI on their lives. However, they are least confident about job retention.

In an online survey of 9,000 people across 21 cities, job loss was noted to be the top concern across nearly all cities in terms of the impact of technological change.

In addition to the index, Oliver Wyman also published results from its AI Disruption qualitative survey, which revealed that there is universal optimism that technological change will positively impact cities.

Asia, in particular, emerged as the most optimistic region by far.

A study by Oxford Economics last year noted that Singapore is likely to be impacted significantly as a consequence of automation and AI.

In fact, Singapore is likely to witness a displacement of 0.5 million jobs over the period of 2018-28, which represents 20.6% of its workforce – the highest percentage in the Asean region.

Singaporeans were found to be generally positive about how technological changes will impact them over the next 20 years. Some 27% of survey respondents reported being very positive on the outlook, while only 2% were very negative.

However, there is a lingering fear among the employed population that their jobs will be at risk of being replaced or eliminated within the next 10 years. Some 15% of respondents considered this to be a high risk, while 6% felt there was only a low risk.

It was also noted that 29% of the employed population in Singapore were currently in at-risk jobs, which are defined as jobs with automatability of more than 70%. These jobs primarily constitute those linked to retail, food service, production and administrative work.

“Despite high levels of optimism for technological change, Asian cities have the least confidence in job retention globally, contrasted by European and North American cities which are more confident in terms of job retention,” says Pervane.

“Even cities regarded as technology hubs such as San Jose and San Francisco are likely to face disruption from automation, and the results show that no city is close to being ready for the challenges ahead,” he adds.

Singapore tops AI Disruption Index, but compelling vision alone might not be enough

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