SINGAPORE – Tech giant Google is looking to fill more than 150 local job openings, most of which are related to technology and engineering, as it deepens its research and development (R&D) commitments to Singapore.
Some of these positions are for a newly unveiled Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre of Excellence for Safety, whose ambit includes tackling new risks associated with agentic AI and content verification.
Unlike traditional AI, new agentic AI systems with the ability to understand natural language can reason and independently complete tasks on behalf of users.
“As AI advances, we need to continue to do even more to get ahead of bad actors and empower our users,” said Google’s vice-president of trust and safety Laurie Richardson on Feb 10, in announcing the setting up of the centre.
The 150 jobs were listed on Google’s career website, as seen by The Straits Times on Feb 10. More than half of these are technical roles including customer solutions engineers, data centre technicians and product managers.
The tech giant declined to reveal how many of the listed vacancies are for the newly-opened AI centre, but said that the centre will be helmed by a new team of research scientists, data scientists and security engineers.
These employees will have their job cut out for them including ring-fencing AI agents to prevent unauthorised actions or potential damage.
“For instance, you don’t want an agent that is created for a very narrow purpose to have access to a wide swath of data on your phone,” said Google’s vice-president of trust and safety Laurie Richardson, during an interview on Feb 10.
This could be in the form of an agent that helps to make health appointments, that should not be allowed to access a user’s payment details.
“We want to make sure that it receives consent in real-time, before it can broaden the actions it takes,” said Ms Richardson.
The centre is among a slate of new initiatives unveiled at the Google for Singapore 2026 event held on Feb 10.
The tech giant declined to reveal the size of its new investments. The company has invested a total of US$5 billion (S$6.3 billion) in technical infrastructure in Singapore, including four data centres, to date.
Since establishing its Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore in 2007, its local workforce has grown to nearly 3,000 employees.
Google’s new AI Centre of Excellence for Safety will also build on existing work that the firm has done in the fields of online safety and content provenance.
For instance, in 2024, the tech company worked with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore to block Android users here from installing apps from unverified sources, as part of a trial to crack down on malware scams.
Separately in 2023, Google DeepMind – the firm’s primary AI research division – created SynthID, a technology that imprints an invisible watermark onto Google AI-generated content.
SynthID has since been incorporated into Google’s Gemini chatbot to allow users to check if a photo or video was generated by Google’s AI models.
Trust is at the foundation of all innovation, said Ms Richardson, adding that Google is committed to making AI safe, helpful and transparent for everyone.
The new AI centre of excellence for safety will focus on safety concerns with tech such as agentic AI, said Google’s vice-president of trust and safety Laurie Richardson.
PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO
On Feb 10, Google also announced new partnerships in the education and health space, including a collaboration with local health-tech startup Amili to create an app that allows users to receive personalised nutrition advice.
By combining Google’s Gemini AI chatbot with Amili’s datasets on gut microbiome health that is specific to the Asian population, this app aims to provide nutrition and lifestyle suggestions based on a user’s microbiome patterns, metabolic health and goals.
Google and Amili aim to roll out a beta version of this app by May 2026.
In partnership with the Infocomm Media Development Authority, Google is also launching a three-month accelerator program that will teach participants how to use AI in non-technical work such as human resources, legal and accountancy.
The programme will start in May, and is open to 500 fresh graduates and mid-career professionals. This builds on the company’s flagship
Skills Ignition SG programme
, which is a 12-month full-time training programme that 28,000 Singaporeans have undergone.
At the event on Feb 10, Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo urged Google to think about how the products and services that are being created in Singapore can be showcased to the world.
Mrs Teo added that significant announcements about how Singapore plans to accelerate AI adoption within enterprises and the workforce will be made during the Budget statement, which Prime Minister Lawrence Wong
will be delivering on Feb 12
.