[SINGAPORE] Grab launched its first Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre of Excellence on Friday (May 23).
Supported by Digital Industry Singapore, the centre will work on projects to utilise AI solutions to impact three key areas: accessibility, productivity and growth, and smart-nation capabilities across South-east Asia.
The centre is also set to generate at least 50 new high-value roles this year. These will range across areas such as product engineering, data science and analytics.
The launch of Grab’s AI Centre of Excellence was attended by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong, who said that the government aims to help companies develop capabilities to administer AI solutions at scale.
“By supporting companies like Grab to establish AI Centres of Excellence, we want to catalyse the development and deployment of AI-driven applications that can drive greater value for both people and businesses,” he said.
Suthen Thomas, chief technology officer of Grab, said that the centre’s aim is not solely to explore how AI can reduce costs for the company – rather, its success will be measured by the impact and opportunities Grab creates in solving problems, and providing users and merchants the leverage to solve their issues as well.
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For instance, he noted that AI solutions can shorten the time needed for the completion of tasks from days to mere seconds, “giving people time back to focus on things that are really important”.
“We look at it from the perspective of the customer; (the metrics of impact) can range from adoption to net promoter score – is the project something that adds value for the customer?” said Thomas.
Ultimately, he said that the centre’s focus is on “expanding the impact that is possible with large language models”.
Applying AI solutions
Some of the AI projects that Grab has worked on include a collaboration with the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH) to develop a feature that allows users with visual impairments to book Grab rides through voice commands.
Currently, this voice-assistant feature is accessible to members of SAVH. Such initiatives set “a new benchmark for inclusivity in transport and digital services”, said Lyn Loh, head of accessibility services in SAVH.
The speech-to-text feature, which is built on OpenAI models, used around 80,000 local voice samples to boost its recognition accuracy of Singaporean accents to 89 per cent, from 46 per cent.
In June, the app will house a voice-donation feature allowing users to contribute voice samples to help make the voice-assistant feature “more intuitive and inclusive”. This will aid the AI model in better detecting building and road names.
Grab has also engineered solutions such as the AI Driver Companion and the AI Merchant Assistant bot.
The former aids Grab drivers throughout their day by recommending optimal areas to pick up customers, ensuring an efficient distribution of drivers islandwide. The latter, already rolled out to the majority of merchants in Singapore, provides tailored operational insights and advice to individual merchants.
