The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Google have teamed up to drive applied artificial intelligence (AI) research and train a new generation of AI practitioners in the city-state through a new research and innovation centre.

The centre will serve as the core of the partnership, providing the resources and technology to pursue experimental and applied AI projects. For example, it will offer a rapid prototyping sandbox, a controlled cloud-based environment powered by Google Cloud’s tensor processing units. This will enable researchers to experiment, test and validate AI applications before deploying them in the real-world.

For a start, the researchers will focus on three key areas. The first, AI in education, will tap Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to develop advanced tools for adult education, creating adaptive learning pathways and course-specific AI companions to support Singapore’s efforts to promote lifelong learning.

A second major project will be the development of a law-specific large language model (LLM). Led by the NUS law faculty, NUS AI Institute and NUS Computing, the domain-specific model will be trained on local statutory interpretation and case precedents to overcome the limitations of generic LLMs in legal contexts.

This is expected to culminate in the development of an AI assistant supporting legal research, with the potential to improve productivity and access to contextually relevant legal information across law firms, the judiciary and public legal education.

The third focus, AI in public health, aims to drive population-level health outcomes by integrating foundational models with diverse data from healthcare, social services and environmental systems. This will support national preventive care programmes like Healthier SG and promote cognitive health and active ageing.

Serene Sia, country director for Singapore and Malaysia at Google Cloud, said: “By combining NUS’s world-class multidisciplinary research capabilities with Google’s AI research and AI-optimised cloud infrastructure, this joint centre is poised to steer safe and responsible AI development and accelerate scientific progress that transforms public health, learning experiences and other vital fields”.

Google is also looking to establish an AI-focused talent development programme at NUS, offering training and certification pathways in Google Cloud AI platforms for students and researchers. In addition, it plans to support a professorship in AI at the university to foster faculty leadership and strengthen the links between academia and industry in a bid to build a sustainable pipeline of AI talent in Singapore.

The latest collaboration between Google and NUS builds on existing initiatives between by the two organisations. These include an on-campus Google Developer Group to equip students with advanced software skills and Google Cloud’s role as an industry partner of the NUS AI Institute.

The partners have also worked together on grooming talent to tackle biomedical challenges with AI, producing the world’s first AI-powered legal journal podcast using Google’s NotebookLM, and recognising exceptional work in computer science through a Google PhD fellowship programme.

“Google has been a valued long-term partner of NUS, and we are excited to deepen this strategic relationship,” said Liu Bin, NUS deputy president for research and technology. “We are confident that our joint efforts with Google will nurture the next generation of AI scientists, engineers, and innovators equipped to tackle real-world challenges.”