How to achieve success using AI

Singapore is making a concerted push for artificial intelligence (AI) by dangling tax incentives, grants and free subscriptions to premium AI tools for Singaporeans.

- Lee Li Ying Correspondent

In his Budget 2026 speech on Feb 12, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong urged companies to use AI to help them work smarter and compete better. He also laid out plans to ramp up national support to help businesses adopt AI. More details will be announced in the coming weeks.

But companies cannot jump on the AI bandwagon if they have not already automated their processes. Automation and AI are often used interchangeably, but they are different.

The Straits Times explains why AI implementations must be built on automation and why clean data is needed for companies to glean business insights and benefit from using AI.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AUTOMATION AND AI?

Automation is the use of technology or programs to perform tasks such as invoice generation or inventory updating with minimal or reduced human intervention by following a set of predefined rules.

In contrast, AI is a branch of science that can learn from data patterns to perform more complex tasks, such as recommending products to customers and improving over time.

Newer forms of AI, known as generative AI, can even allow users to create content, images or video by instructing the technology in natural language.

Mr Remus Lim, senior vice-president of the Asia-Pacific and Japan at US-headquartered AI and data platform company Cloudera, said enterprises need to automate first to remove manual effort and then add AI for intelligence and context.

WHAT ARE THE PREREQUISITES FOR AI?

First, define the business problem, say, inefficiencies of manual tasks or errors.