Speech by Mr Lim Chuan Poh, Chairman of A*STAR, at the closing ceremony and dinner of the tenth international science youth forum at Conrad Centennial Singapore on 25 January 2018

Professor Phua Kok Khoo, Director, Institute of Advanced Studies, Nanyang Technological University,

Mr Robson Lee Teck Leng, Chairman, Board of Directors, Hwa Chong Institution,

Mr Pang Choon How, Principal, Hwa Chong Institution,

Nobel Laureates,

Distinguished Guests,

Delegates and Educators,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A very good evening to all of you.

Introduction

We are coming to the conclusion of the International Science Youth Forum (ISYF) 2018.

It has probably been one of the most insightful week for you, and I have no doubt that you have been intrigued and, at the same time, inspired to be more curious and determined to push boundaries.

This is the 10^th consecutive run of ISYF.

This event has cultivated many promising scientific minds, to think critically and creatively about the Sciences and, just as importantly, issues and problems in general.

I am happy that A*STAR continues to be part of this effort and to support the growth of ISYF over the years.

Since the inception, the number of student participants has steadily increased by over 50% to around 120 this year.

Geographically, ISYF has extended its reach from within Asia to now include schools from Egypt, Estonia, Mexico, Poland, United States, United Kingdom and beyond to add further richness to the diversity.

From only three Nobel Laureates in attendance at the inaugural edition of ISYF, the guest list has expanded to Fields Medallists and a Turing Award recipient.

In total, over thirty different Nobel Laureates and Distinguished Scientists have participated in the ISYF.

Masterclasses, which are led by research scientists and industry practitioners from leading organisations in Singapore, have also brought the latest in the landscape to this event.

All in all, there is no doubt that ISYF has been a tremendous success and everyone gathered here tonight are the reasons for the success.

You all deserve a big round of applause.

In particular, I would like to invite all of you to join me to thank the organisors, Hwa Chong Institution, the Institute of Advanced Studies at Nanyang Technological University and the Ministry of Education for their tireless efforts in bringing this event about every year for the last ten years.

The theme for this year’s ISYF is ‘Transcending Frontiers’.

In science, just when we thought that we have reached the zenith of scientific thought and development, we often end up finding ourselves at the beginning of another phase of scientific discovery and technological advancement.

In 1899, a comedy magazine offered a look at the “coming century”:

In colloquy, a genius asked "Isn't there a clerk who can examine patents?"

A boy replied "Quite unnecessary, Sir. Everything that can be invented has been invented."

This, of course, cannot be further from the truth.

Just in the last ten years, we have made so much more progress and discoveries.

Two years ago, we finally managed to detect gravitational waves, resolving a 100-year old prediction by Albert Einstein; a few years before, we discovered the Higgs boson or “god particle” through the efforts of thousands of scientists and the massive investment in the Large Hadron Collider and in the process completing the standard model (one of the Nobel Laureate here, Prof Francois Englert received the prize in 2013 together with Prof Peter Higgs for their theoretical discovery of this fundamental particle); we also made huge progress in biomedical research where HIV can now be treated; we are witnessing the tremendous potential of immunotherapy in our war against cancer; and gene therapy is becoming a reality with much more precise gene editing technology just to name a few of the significant breakthroughs.

The reality in science is that the unknowns are unending.

There will always be new questions to challenge the scientists even as we made new discoveries and findings.

However, we should also note that scientific discoveries are propelled by technological advances, without which, it would not have been possible for us to detect, to measure, or even to make sense of the observations.

At the same time, it is this relentless pursuit to answer the scientific questions that focuses the effort of the technological development.

There is therefore a symbiotic relationship between the two, and, today, we are entering a phase of science and technology advancing forward at an accelerating rate mainly because of the computational power that are now at our disposal to make sense of the big data that we are generating.

This also means that we need to prepare our young differently for this future.

But, what kind of future are we entering?

Let me just highlight three defining characteristics:

• First is that of rapid technological change
• Second is that of the nature of jobs
• Third is that of global challenges

Rapid Technological Changes

On rapid technological change, we know we are in a different age when Alphago defeated the world best go player, Ke Jie.

And AlphaGo is recognised as one of the breakthrough of the year in 2016 by Science Journal.

But, AlphaGo initial training was to mimic human expert Go players and lots of them.

Once it reached a certain level of proficiency, it started playing against instances of itself using reinforcement learning to improve its game.

Last October, AlphaGo Zero was unveiled.

AlphaGo Zero managed to teach itself the game without recourse to human experts, in other words, no training data but only the rules and objective of the game.

In 3 days, AlphaGo Zero learnt enough to defeat the version of AlphaGo that defeated the Korean Le Se Dol unlike the months that it took to train AlphaGo itself for that match.

Conceptually, what has been done for AlphaGo Zero can also be applied to other very challenging but similar tasks confronting us.

We are indeed witnessing the age of AI riding on the wave of digital revolution.

They have and will continue to transform how we live, work and play.

For example, on the social front, you can easily connect with your families and friends back home, and share photos from ISYF with a few taps on your phone.

As a matter of fact, you can even share this event live with your friends and families.

Just a decade ago, this would have been quite difficult.

On education, the increased connectivity has also opened up huge opportunities.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide an affordable and flexible way to level the access to quality education across nearly all geographies.

We now have celebrity professors with literally millions of students, and students in Britain, Bangladesh or Bolivia can tune in to the same lectures.

At the same time, students can also access tutors online.

On transportation, we are witnessing the advent of autonomous vehicles.

The ability of a self-driving vehicle to navigate through traffic, identify obstacles and avoid them would have seemed far too complex just a decade ago.

Yet now, Tesla has their driverless vehicles on the road, and almost all major automotive companies have poured in significant investments to manufacture more intelligent and safer driverless vehicles.

The space is so exciting that it has also attracted non-automotive companies like Google and others to be fully engaged in this development.

In Singapore, A*STAR's Institute for Infocomm Research and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology have also been carrying out driverless trials in one-north.

Another change is how machines are increasingly working together without human in the loop in what is termed as the “Internet of Things” (IoT).

A driverless car could find the most optimal route to take you automatically to your next appointment;  

your washing machine could be set to commence when the energy price is at the lowest, and so much more.

The promises of new technologies are enormous.

Evolving Jobs

These rapid technological changes will impact both the nature of jobs and where jobs will be created.

The attractiveness of low labour cost location will increasingly be less so compared to hubs that can offer the most cost effective technology with the talent to optimise the use of the technology to transform the business and operational model.

The future of jobs will be very different from today.

Technological innovation such as automation has always been able to replace human labour in the past especially in highly repetitive and routine tasks.

However, this wave of technological disruption will not just impact the labour intensive sector but that of professional services and even lawyers will not be spared.

For instance, Senior Minister of State, Ms Indranee Rajah, in laying out the roadmap for the professional services yesterday, gave the example that due diligence used to involve (quote) “armies of lawyers and accountants going down to the clients’ offices and trawling through the books”.

“Now, you can do a lot of that with data analytics.” (Unquote)

And this involves a different set of skills.

On the other hand, there is no immediate risk that machines will be taking over the world and ruling over humanity.

The envisage future is one where humans and machines work collaboratively together to achieve the most optimal outcomes for humanity.

What is clear is that we need to know how to best work with our machines to best serve our community.

Impact of Globalisation

Against the backdrop of the rapid technological change and disruptive innovations, we are at the same time witnessing some significant and growing global challenges.

Climate change, environmental impact, growing population and pandemics are just some of them.

All of you gathered here came from the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere and the tropics.

Just in the past month, we have witnessed some of the coldest weather in the north, the hottest weather in the south, and in the case of Singapore, the wettest weather.

These are challenges that no single country has all the answers or solutions and the global community has to work together to sustain our planet or we will be witnessing the tragedy of the commons.

We therefore need to also cultivate a mindset of working together as a global community in a responsible and sustainable way.

Science is almost the best place for this to start as science is international and, indeed, many of the significant breakthroughs in the last ten years came about from the global scientific community working together as one.

This need to collaborate internationally is also increasingly seen in Singapore.

For example, in healthcare, the Genome Institute of Singapore, an A*STAR Research Institute, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, and National University Health System jointly led research with collaborators from Denmark and the U.S.

This led to the identification of a unique biomarker which is strongly associated with the relapse of breast cancer.

This ground-breaking discovery could help women with breast cancer in Singapore and the world.

For the same reason, we are welcoming many international students to do their studies in Singapore so that they will become the bridges that connect Singapore to wherever they choose to pursue their careers in the future.

Role and Importance of Education

This is why we need to prepare our young well for this dynamic but exciting future ahead.

Education provides the key.

It is imperative that we equip future generations with the right mix of skills to further discoveries and drive technological advances.

Over the years, education has been able to respond to the global trends, but this can no longer be taken for granted because of the increased pace of change and the disruptive nature of the changes.

The focus is to prepare agile and adaptable life-long learners for this rapidly changing landscape.

In this Age of Google where information is just a click or voice-command away, education should no longer focus on content acquisition and accumulation.

Instead, students need to know how to seek and make sense of the information.

Traditional academic competencies such as literacy, numeracy, analytics, and science are still needed but are clearly not sufficient.

What will be needed are broad-based skills including teamwork, critical thinking, communication and networking.

These skills are not new, but they simply deserve far greater emphasis going forward.

We therefore need to cultivate in our students the ability to do self-directed learning, especially online.

In this regard, ISYF has been, and continues to be, an excellent platform for you to start developing some of these soft-skills from a young age.

Your interactions with the esteemed scientists; teamwork with your diverse group members; and discussion of topics beyond the classroom curriculum, are the type of learning activities that you need to better prepare you for the future.

At the same time, we also hope that you will take away from this event the attributes of being curious about what you observe and tenacious enough to seek the answers.

Alongside these attributes, we need you to have this sense of constructive discontentment, not entirely satisfied with what you see around you, but instead of complaining, you are prepared to roll up your sleeves and make a constructive difference.

It is with this mindset that we can overturn paradigms and continue to break new boundaries and improve the planet that we share together.

Conclusion

On this note, let me wish all of you every success in your future endeavours and for those from overseas, safe travels home.

Thank you very much.