Singapore: Sự gián đoạn việc làm do AI, sự thay đổi trong tuyển dụng và tình trạng thất nghiệp của thanh niên với Shiyan Koh - E552

“One is, of course, AI. And I think it's a really interesting topic. I had a friend tell me—AI doesn't need a career path, AI doesn't need a weekend off, AI doesn't need compliments, and AI is a fraction of the cost of an analyst. So why do I need an analyst? And there's quite a lot of truth to some of those statements. That’s an interesting topic to explore a little bit—like if a lot of entry-level jobs were really around research, slide prep, meeting prep, all that sort of stuff, what does it mean when your partner at a consulting firm, MD, VP at an investment bank—all the way down the line—can basically have those job functions done with the press of a button, at a much lower cost and faster?” - Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund

“How do I take this and turn my interests, my passions, into a career? And maybe you start out and you're like, okay, I'm like a PT. But then there’s people who are like, "Oh, then I build a gym." "I build software for my gym." I think there’s this sort of more, like, entrepreneurial way to think about it—versus it’s not like a top-down thing. There’s this notion of, "Hey, we should actually all become attuned to what our market needs that match up with our passions." And how do we have the agency to identify those and say, let’s go try something and do it?” - Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund

“Whatever we think of AI today is going to be way more capable in ten years. We're just going to assume that you're going to figure out how to use it. And how do you, like, get them oriented towards a goal? The third one is, like, a little bit harder, which is—like—the people who can best use AI are actually the people who have the most context. Because they can direct it more effectively. And maybe the answer is—you don’t pick. You just have to be really good at learning something so that wherever you end up, you’re really good at teaching yourself how to get deep in that thing—or deep enough that you can go direct it.” - Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund

Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund, and Jeremy Au explored the growing challenges of youth unemployment in Singapore and how AI is fundamentally changing the job market. They discussed how the rise of automation is making entry-level roles less necessary, leading companies to prioritize experienced hires who can work with AI rather than train fresh graduates. They also examine how AI amplifies the gap between high and low performers, making adaptability and self-motivation more crucial than ever. They also talked about the need for educational reforms that focus on problem-solving and real-world applications, as well as how young professionals can position themselves for success in an AI-driven economy.

1. Youth unemployment rates are increasing – In 2022, 94% of Singapore university graduates were employed within six months, but by 2024, only 87% of fresh graduates had secured full-time jobs.

2. AI is displacing entry-level jobs – AI tools are replacing tasks traditionally done by junior employees, reducing the need for new hires, especially in roles like market research, legal functions, and writing.

3. Companies prefer experienced hires – Businesses are opting for experienced workers who are comfortable using AI tools, reducing the reliance on entry-level hires due to the high cost of training and managing juniors.

4. AI benefits top performers – High performers in companies are already leveraging AI, while low performers are falling behind, highlighting that AI does not necessarily level the playing field.

5. The challenge of learning through apprenticeships – Entry-level positions have traditionally been apprenticeships where workers learn the craft. With fewer junior roles available, the next generation of workers may lack the experience needed for senior positions.

6. Education needs to change to foster agency – Shiyan suggests that education should focus on helping students develop agency and problem-solving skills by working on open-ended real-world problems, rather than simply memorizing facts.

7. The importance of finding passion and adaptability – As AI changes the job landscape, young professionals must be passionate about their work and adaptable to new tools like AI to remain competitive in the evolving market.

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(00:59) Jeremy Au: Hey, Shiyan, really excited to have you back.

(01:02) Shiyan Koh: Super excited, Jeremy. Two shots of espresso excited.

(01:05) Jeremy Au: Yeah, you just flew back. I just landed this morning.

Yeah. So very dedicated to this recording. So

(01:11) Shiyan Koh: I've committed.

(01:11) Jeremy Au: So this is what a sleep-deprived Shiyan sounds like. Hopefully it's perfect.

(01:14) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. I got a little bit of sleep. I got like premium economy quality sleep.

(01:18) Jeremy Au: Ooh. That's the best. There's a sweet spot.

So today I think we want to talk about something that was interesting, right? Which is about the big headline is that Singapore youth as the highest unemployment or difficulty finding jobs as of today. So this is the thing that came out was that in 2022, 94% of Singapore University graduates were employed and for 2024, only 87% of fresh graduates are employed today. That being said,

(01:47) Shiyan Koh: Six months after, what's the period?

(01:49) Jeremy Au: This, but within the first six months after graduation. And I think they use extended a one year effectively. And then for those who do find a job between 2022 to 2024, the monthly salary has grown from $4,200 to $4,500, which is growing by about 4+%, which is better than what inflation is.

So it's an interesting trend where those who do get jobs are getting better salaries and, but there are more people who are not finding full time jobs. We were discussing that and we also see that ourselves and the industries and the companies we're looking at. So we want to talk a little bit about that.

So Shiyan, what do you think is going on?

(02:27) Shiyan Koh: Oh, man. I think there's a macro thing too, which is just I think 21, 22 people hired a lot. Yeah. It's like the pandemic years where, people were at home spending money in front of their computers. And I actually think that you're seeing like with the layoffs and people shedding jobs, some of that coming down.

So there's some normalization, I think, post-pandemic. So I think that could be one factor in it. I think the other one is, of course, AI and I think it's a really interesting topic, right? Which is I had a friend tell me, AI doesn't need a career path. AI doesn't need the weekend off. AI doesn't need compliments. And AI is a fraction of the cost of an analyst. So why do I need an analyst? But there is, I think, quite a lot of truth to some of those statements. And so I think that's an interesting topic to explore a little bit around, like if a lot of entry level jobs really were around research, slide prep, meeting prep, all that sort of stuff, what does it mean that your partner at a consulting firm, MD, VP at an investment bank, all the way down the line, can basically have those job functions done with the press of a button at a much lower cost and faster. First I think for employment, but even beyond just getting a job, those were always thought of as apprenticeships, right? Like you're learning the craft from someone along the way. Everybody has to do that basic work to get up to that point where they can be the rainmaker.

So if you don't have those opportunities to learn the craft, how do you even become that person, right? So in the interim, the VP, MD's are like, Oh, awesome, press the button. But then, let's say 10 years from now, like, how do people get the requisite experience to go do those more senior level jobs? I think that's another question that I would love to explore further.

(04:04) Jeremy Au: Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense because I definitely do see that for I think my friends companies and what's happening is that basically somebody saying something like, okay, normally you need a junior level marketer or junior level person to do your market research to understand something, debug something pretty simple. And now, I'll say somebody with maybe several years experience or five or 10, they're just using ChatGPT or Claude to get it done. So to some extent, then the question is wow, managing a human person to come in feels like it's more work. I'd rather hire somebody who has at least three to five years experience, who really has some of those workplace norms and a little bit less risky than an entry level grad, because a lot of entry level graduates, they join and they don't feel motivated. There's a lot of training that you don't know how to do anything.

(04:51) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, when you graduate from college, I always tell people, same thing for me when I graduated from college, what was I good at? I was really good at taking tests and doing homework, right?

(04:59) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(04:59) Shiyan Koh: My first job, my associate like stood over my shoulder. I was like, that's not how you write a corporate email.

(05:04) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(05:04) Shiyan Koh: They basically train you to be a working professional.

(05:07) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(05:08) Shiyan Koh: So yeah, if you can hire someone who has three to five years of experience and who's really comfortable with agents and bots and like happy to teach themselves and give themselves leverage, then why do you need to hire more entry level people, right? Yeah, you don't you actually get way more juice out of this person and you're almost even willing to pay the person more

(05:26) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(05:26) Shiyan Koh: Because they're saving you on headcount

(05:28) Jeremy Au: Yeah, exactly And so it's interesting because historically you would have had to have say four entry level people and one middle manager managing those four. And now you're like, maybe one manager person and one hungry person can cover the work of four people, these five people actually in the context of, I think some fields, especially like marketing is very impacted, anything to do with writing or research.

(05:50) Shiyan Koh: It's not even that my friend just hired a head of an in house counsel for her growth stage company. And it was specifically, the JD was specifically to find someone who was willing to figure out how to automate the legal department, basically, it's "Hey, what does a SaaS company legal department do?" It's contracts, customer contracts, employment contracts, maybe some leases and things like that, but their perspective as a senior team was like, we don't want to go out and hire a ton of lawyers to scale with our business. We want to go hire a GC who is like willing and happy to use technology to basically look at our legal systems and build processes and bots basically that can handle that. So it's not just marketing. I think this is like impacting every aspect. I have a founder who's like, "Why do I need an engineering manager, a product manager?" He's like, I am the product manager. He's I have full context in my head.

(06:40) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(06:40) Shiyan Koh: He's like, me and Claude. I tell Claude what I want. Claude generates the code. I review the code. And I ship to production.

(06:47) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(06:47) Shiyan Koh: I don't need another six people to have overhead communication with.

(06:51) Jeremy Au: Exactly. And I think that's the big part is that it's not just that the undergraduates have relatively low value adverse experience, but managers don't really want to manage more because there's an overhead of communication, training, coaching, and why do you have to do all that stuff? You can just have a leaner, meaner team of AI and some people who are willing to use the AI as well.

(07:10) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. It is interesting though. So like I was chatting with a friend who's like a people leader at a, 50, $60 million company. She was saying, historically it's been hard to find great talent in HR functions. And so you end up with this overhead of managing kind of middling, you have one or two really good and they have a bunch of middling.

(07:27) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(07:28) Shiyan Koh: And she said her initial hope was that she would teach them all to use AI and they would all level themselves up. And she's like, what's really annoying? She's the people who use AI are already my top performers.

(07:39) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(07:39) Shiyan Koh: And the rest are still, it's not actually elevating them. So it's not about tools, it's actually about attitude.

(07:46) Jeremy Au: All right.

(07:46) Shiyan Koh: And I can't fix the attitude like, giving more tools can't fix the attitude. And so I think that is also something to think about because the sort of like happy version of the world is hey look, everyone has tools now. Everyone can go out and be like their own leader, founder, whatever it is. But then you have to deal with this question of like motivation of like how much agency someone feels that drive to get things moving forward. And I can't fix that.

(08:09) Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I think there's a tricky part, right? Because I think there was a belief that it would be a leveler for talent. And so everybody was a low performer will become a better performer. But I think that's I think the issue that I think from the one of the studies that I've done on AI talent so far was that these people are often looking at high performing companies.

So they're looking at consultants in BCG, and they were like, Oh, high performance only get a small bump versus average or below average performance in consulting get a large bump. But then you're like, wait a moment. Everybody at Boston Consulting Group is actually pretty strong performer relative to the average population, right? A below average BCG person is effectively an above average person in the general white collar workforce. So yes, there's some graduation degree, but I think for a big chunk of economy, they are not by nature, like maybe they're not a job they love. Maybe they're not motivated, but also they're not motivated to learn AI. And then all of those combines to say I don't really feel a need to catch up. And I think what we're already starting to see is that from the managers that I talk to, a lot of them are just saying these people are getting replaced by the better performers or the software tools are getting much better.

And so there's some level of shedding of these folks. So I think it shows up as shedding, I think, an invisible productivity improvement for, I would say, some years of experience of white collar jobs. But I think it's showing up as less jobs available for the youth that are graduating.

(09:31) Shiyan Koh: I think, you've got little kids, I've got little kids, right? So I'm watching all this stuff go down and it's making me think okay, AI today is the worst it's ever going to be, right? It's only going to be better.

(09:41) Jeremy Au: Yeah, that's true.

(09:42) Shiyan Koh: By the time our kids go to college, get into the workforce, it's only going to be better. And having said that, how do we prepare our kids to deal with that future? What is the thing that you want them to have? And I think at the top of my list is agency, right? You actually have to teach people to be proactive and be like, oh, you wanna do something? Okay, make a plan. Go do it. Don't wait for someone to tell you to do something. Like how are you gonna marshal resources and go do it? Because whatever we think of AI today is gonna be way more capable in 10 years. We are just gonna assume that you're going to figure out how to use it. But that mindset, I think that's something is going to be really important. One, I think two is part of agency and martial resources is you need to be able to talk to other people and convince them to do stuff with you.

So I think there is this element of like, how do you get groups of people to work together and what is your skill in like navigating other people's incentives and motivations and like, how do you like get them oriented towards a joint goal? The third one is like a little bit harder, which is like the people who can best use AI are actually the people who have the most context, right? Because they can direct it more effectively. How do you decide what you should have context on? How do you decide what you should be deep in versus not? And maybe the answer is you don't pick, you just have to be really good at learning something so that wherever you end up, you're really good at teaching yourself how to get deep in that thing, or deep enough that you can go direct it. Those are my preliminary thoughts. How about you? Where are you landing on this with your kids?

(11:04) Jeremy Au: I think that for the kids, they have to be, I think two more points on top of yours would be, one is, they should be passionate about what they're doing. So the match is really important because if you're not, I think there was a time in the past where you're just like, you don't like your job in corporate, but you just

(11:22) Shiyan Koh: Suck it up?

(11:23) Jeremy Au: And so you're just like, always at the average 50% mark, right? And I feel like average 50% performance in a world where the top performers can use AI to go really fast, I think that might work in your entry level job, but I think that cumulative compounding effect would just let you basically lose your job in five years time. So I think that's one piece. The other piece I think that's key actually is those jobs that are protected look pretty safe now. They look more safe, like one of the things that AI is. Not allowed to truly, fully displace in that sense. So marketers are not protected class of occupation. So you already see that whole marketing departments are getting fired because AI can basically do the whole output of the whole thing. But you're not allowed to use AI to replace as of today, a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, right? An army general.

(12:12) Shiyan Koh: I think lawyers are going away.

(12:13) Jeremy Au: I think that lawyers are facing a big trouble where, yes, I think a lot of the work that they use on the word side is getting automated because so much of the job is easily automated. I just think that at the end of the day, still, you will never see a lawyer, a robot lawyer in court for a long time, but it's my perspective. And so I do think that trial lawyers, for example, is going to be protected. And in fact, I will issue the argument that because bots are gonna do so much legal research.

I think the cost of lawsuits is gonna go down and I think the amount of lawsuits and the complexity of the lawsuits is gonna go by order of magnitude. And so I don't think you have those like normal lawyers with those documents. Yeah. But I think all you are like, like prosecutor, defender, very complicated billion dollar page document case. I think that a lot more losses will happen. So from my perspective, I think tho that those are the type of more protected occupations where I'm not saying that isn't going to be impacted by AI is impacted by AI, but at some level by law, by regulation, the technology has to feed through that layer, which is a law firm, a senior lawyer, a doctor, a politician, like it has to go through, right?

(13:22) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, it still ends up being the best of the best, but it is an interesting idea, which is I don't know, little kids are always like, sneezing, having rashes, I do take a lot of photos, and then I upload it to ChatGPT and I'm like, what could this possibly be? And it's, do I need to go to the doctor? And they always say, I am not a doctor, but, probably heat rash, and I'm like, ah, heat rash, that's fine, we don't need to go to the doctor.

(13:42) Jeremy Au: No, I think there's gonna be a lot of efficiency throughout the entire system and I'm gonna say like medicine, law, all these things will all be impacted by AI. It's just that at least you know that by law, there is a job that can be there, right? Because of how the system is built, right? So I'm just saying, at the day there are jobs that are more protected than other jobs.

(14:00) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Passion is an interesting thing though, which is like, discover your passion or how do you help someone discover their passion?

(14:06) Jeremy Au: Can you imagine somebody who's, "My strength is document research and searching the web."

(14:12) Shiyan Koh: My strength is Meme Lord.

(14:13) Jeremy Au: Meme Lord! But, there's a tricky part, right? It's like the whole Ikigai, the value idea. That really doesn't exist in Japan. It only exists in the Western concept of Japan, which is like the things that I like to do, the things that society wants me to do, the things I'm getting paid to do, the things that I'm good at. So that four diagram. Then if you can help your child, let's shave a bullseye.

(14:33) Shiyan Koh: But I think this is the hard thing, which is, you don't really know what you're good at. I think the idea of being good at something naturally is false. Like most things require you to actually expend some effort to figure out like, are you good at it? You don't like, very few people are like prodigies day one. You're like, "Oh man, this person is like a brilliant XYZ thing," right? Like it takes work, right? And so sometimes I think we overvalue passion because it's I don't feel passionate. Yeah, at the beginning of learning, everything feels hard. This is what it feels like. And so you have to push through that to get to the part where you're like, Oh, this is fun. I don't know. I think about investing like that, right? Because investing is hard. There are moments where you're like, Oh, this is really cool. I think I learned something. But then there are moments where you're like, I'm an idiot. How come I didn't see that? I didn't figure that out. And there's this constant process of like learning, mastery, realizing you're an idiot, learning mastery, realizing you're an idiot. But you have to push through to get to that point because sometimes in the beginning of learning about investing is like boring.

(15:25) Jeremy Au: No, I agree with you. And I also, and our part of it is as parents and kids, it's I'm doing a job that my parents could never envisioned. This is the bike job didn't exist, right? I'm just saying like high growth startup, biotech, COO. I was going to be like, the only part I understand is like COO, which is a manager, right? I think one interesting aspect about this conversation is that to some extent, our kids will have more time to adjust because we're watching this AI thing happen. But for the youth of this generation, it's like kind of a weird thing, because normally when jobs are laid off, people normally lay off the old people first and replace them with cheaper, younger people who are hungrier, right? And so historically it's not really youth unemployment that kicks off, it's normally the inverse, which is older people find it harder to

(16:10) Shiyan Koh: Because they're more expensive.

(16:11) Jeremy Au: Yeah, exactly, right? So it's weird I don't know, inverted.

(16:14) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. I think if you're graduating now, and you thought you were going to be a marketer, how do you position yourself to not be replaced or I guess, whatever the verb you want to use is.

And I think that's like a, it's both like a hard question and an easy question, right? Because on the one hand, You're 22you'rere probably really good at technology. You're actually very comfortable trying new things, whatever it is. But on the other hand it's hard because you may not have a mental model for how marketing works yet. You might only have an academic perspective on it. You haven't actually worked in a company yet. So how do you start using those skills to actually help yourself get one foot forward. It actually reminds me of do you remember during the great zero interest rate period where people like Uber were giving out like all those referral goodies?

I had a bunch of colleagues who basically were setting up their own paid marketing campaigns to drive traffic to their Uber referral codes. And basically, traffic in a moment, before the company itself realized that their referral codes are being gamed. So the reason I bring that up is that there are actually lots of ways to use your skills in the real world that don't require employment. And so if you think of marketing as "Hey, it is the discipline of finding customers, four P's? Product, price,

(17:33) Jeremy Au: place, promotion.

(17:34) Shiyan Koh: Place, promotion, yeah. But I think there's this sort of challenge yourself to use your academic skills in a practical way, and then to use the tools, right? Whether it is free ChatGPT or say, I'm going to make the investment, I'm going to pay $20 a month to pay for Claude or ChatGPT and I'm going to try to drive something. I think that is the thing that is going to break through because, there's going to be all these people who graduated at the same time who all have no work experience. And if you can be like, yeah, I actually drove like 100,000 views of this thing and converted 5% of them. I think then you'll find someone who will take a chance on you because then you'll show like your brain is working, you're switched on, you're hustling, and you're not just like an, you're not someone who has to be taken from the academic realm and brought into the real world, like you are already forging your own path forward there.

(18:22) Jeremy Au: And I think that's a really good mental model, right? Which is, I think what you're describing is like the top, let's just say 10% of folks, who, maybe they would have gone for a traditional status job, like consulting, like I did, or banking or something like that. But I think there's an opportunity which is to increasingly go towards tech because they use technology to amplify themselves. Top 10% would be there. Then I think the other top 40% I think they are going to step up their game. I think there's going to do more internships. They're going to do what you just did. So I think for them, technology used to be a net plus.

(18:55) Shiyan Koh: Yeah.

(18:55) Jeremy Au: I think the tricky part, I think, is the bottom 10% and the bottom 40%. I think about 10% were always going to suffer because, they were not motivated, and so forth. They were struggling for whatever set of reasons. I think they'll continue to struggle or struggle worse in this world. But I think the TRI, I don't know what is it, I think they're 40% below average. I think they could have coasted and I don't think they're allowed to coast anymore.

(19:16) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. But I think there's also just like to think about what is your relative competitive advantage, right? Like I've always said this, which is Singaporeans actually, we're the most well endowed people in this region from like a human capital perspective, right? Like we're the best educated in this region. We speak English. That should be like a huge asset. So it isn't that only jobs based here are the only thing available to you, right? Like with the internet like you could do global jobs. You can run global businesses out of Singapore.

And so then the question is like can you motivate yourself to go do those things and find those things? And there are tons of SMEs in Singapore that struggle with productivity, adoption of technology and things like that. So can you go take over an SME and apply more efficiency and productivity to it? I think there's actually a lot of opportunity in the world, but, it requires more effort than lobbying your resume in and interviewing and then

(20:10) Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think I agree with you, and I think also people are concerned because they feel like they're also competing, like you said, across the region for that. And I think it's a little bit like people are concerned about the Johor-Singapore special economic zone. We discussed that in a prior podcast, a lot of jobs are being moved by the banks, for example, their back office and mid office jobs are being moved to Malaysia. So I think there's a lot of concern as well. It's not just the AI side, but also this offshoring of Singapore jobs.

(20:38) Shiyan Koh: This is everywhere, right? I think the journal just had one, which is Hey, bankers are told, do you want to go to Salt Lake City or Dallas? Like moving people out of their high cost offices. And a lot of mid and back office type of roles. And so I think that's just the reality, right? Which is if your job can be done at the same quality or better at a lower cost, in a lower cost location, it'll probably go there. And so then the question for you, for us, is What is the thing that we can uniquely do? And do well? And, I think you'd be happier too if you find the thing that you can uniquely do well.

(21:10) Jeremy Au: That's the big if, right? Because if you find it, then you're happier, even though it's painful for six months or a year searching for a job. Yeah, but I think there's gonna be a part where I think people are concerned what if they never find a job because it's structurally impossible, for example, I'm a Copywriter. And I studied for many years to be a writer and now competing against AI and competing against fractional freelance talent from the Philippines and Malaysia who are charging half, a one third, a one quarter of the price because of the cost of living difference. So it's a nightmare.

(21:43) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. I think other protected jobs are things that you want to do in person, right? Which are like physical trainer.

(21:48) Jeremy Au: Yeah, that's true. You can't offshore that right now.

(21:50) Shiyan Koh: Massage therapist.

(21:51) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(21:52) Shiyan Koh: I have friends who use Zoom trainers. But I don't know. I still like the in person. I feel like in person. Someone like someone yelling at you in person is more powerful than someone yelling at you over Zoom. But also correcting you right? If you're not doing the thing correctly, I think it's much harder to correct over Zoom.

(22:07) Jeremy Au: I agree. I agree. I don't disagree with you. I think a personal trainer is a job that's in person. It's not outsourceable easily to me yet. And it's not automotable by AI.

(22:18) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, the hot slots are a bit harder.

(22:20) Jeremy Au: There's a career advice, I can't imagine, it's I think, I don't know, the government slogan is, "give up on your dreams, become a physical trainer"

(22:27) Shiyan Koh: No, no, but see, I think this is because people are like, I don't know what to say. They're a bit like elitist about white collar jobs versus what they perceive as like non white collar jobs. But personal trainers aren't cheap, like I think they actually make pretty good money. Yeah. And a lot of them are actually trained in physio para health professionals in terms of like their understanding of like recovery, athletic training, performance, all that sort of stuff. And I think as societies become wealthier, people spend more on health and wellness.

It becomes, if you can't put food on the table, you're not like, oh let me work on my VO2 max. But, as people become societies become wealthier, they spend more on recreation, but also on health and wellness. And so I think all of those professions that are related and in that orbit also become, more well compensated more than a copywriter, I bet.

(23:16) Jeremy Au: Okay. I get it. I think the difference between what the government can say between versus what you and I are saying is some reality of the market today. It's just imagining my head is okay, I'm a parent. It's okay, kid, I'm going to train you towards a, and I guess based on this, all this thinking would be like, I'm going to focus you and train you to be a palliative care professional folks in person because Singapore is an ageing society. And, that could be like the outcome of how someone would

(23:44) Shiyan Koh: interpret this

(23:45) Jeremy Au: conversation.

(23:46) Shiyan Koh: I think it's less that and it's more at least the folks that I've met in this sort of sphere, a lot of them are like very keen sports people. That's how they got into it, right? Like they were really keen sports people. They started to learn more about their personal performance. And then they started learning about muscles and ligament, like that's how they got into it. And it's then at some point you realize, okay, I'm not gonna be a professional athlete or whatever it is.

And you're like, okay, like what's next for me? How do I take this and turn my interests, my passions into a career? And maybe you start out and you're like, okay, I'm like a PT, but then there's people who are like, Oh, then I build a gym, right? I build software, I like, for my gym I think there's this sort of more like entrepreneurial way to think about it, versus it's not like a top down, like the government's we must now all become personal trainers, right?

Of course not. But I think there's this notion of hey, we should actually all become attuned to what our market needs that match up with our passions. And how do we have the agency to identify those and say I'm gonna go try something and do it. I think that's I think we're versus the if you study this you'll be fine. Like everybody study computer science.

(24:50) Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think there's a tricky part right for all jobs, education, employment at some level, you know the state is supposed to look you know, 20 years after the years on a rope because education is paid for by the government on behalf of taxpayers on average.

(25:05) Shiyan Koh: So this is an interesting conversation. Given what we are talking about. How should education change?

(25:11) Jeremy Au: Use more AI and computers.

(25:13) Shiyan Koh: No, no, no. I mean, I think

(25:14) Jeremy Au: That could be one suggestion.

(25:16) Shiyan Koh: I guess it could be. I don't know if that's the answer.

(25:18) Jeremy Au: You get an iPad. You get an iPad. Everybody has an iPad. That was a push, I'll say, about seven years ago in terms of the digitization across the most iPad time, for example.

(25:29) Shiyan Koh: I think, I'm really fixated on this idea of like agency, which is that I think we should increasingly push kids to drive their learning agendas. So rather than be like, okay, this is a statistics module or, whatever it is, right? I think it should be like, okay here's a big data set of youth unemployment. Let's make it, here's the data set of youth employment over the last five years, last ten years. Use what you learned in your statistics class, based on what you learned in your statistics class, analyze this data set and make a series of recommendations.

I think we have to push people to like, actually get in the habit of "Okay, I'm seeing a situation. How do I marshal the resources I do have to figure out what's going on here? And make a plan. Make a recommendation." And then have that interaction, okay? Okay, if this is your policy recommendation, what happens next? What are the outputs? What would happen? I think that's actually more interesting. Or okay, you've learned this set of, I don't know, biology or chemistry or whatever it is. Now you and Claude and you and ChatGPT, go figure out some use cases for this learning. More open ended stuff that actually forces people to use tools to drive an outcome rather than test you on knowing something. You doing recall on something is almost going to be worthless.

(26:40) Jeremy Au: That's how a lot of our exams are, right? What is the mitochondria cycle and.

(26:45) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. But so more like given what you know about the mitochondria cycle, right? How might you apply that to XYZ problem?

(26:53) Jeremy Au: Yeah. I'm just imagining like some systems person like myself is being like, how do you assess that fairly? Isn't that more workload than teachers in the system?

(27:02) Shiyan Koh: Sure. But like at the end of the day, to your point, if we're going to spend public tax dollars on people's education, then we should actually endeavor to give them skills that are useful to growing GDP, right? To their marginal productivity. Not just about oh, now I can rank you from 1 to 40,000.

(27:21) Jeremy Au: I think what's interesting is that I think that recently the Singapore government has announced that they are reducing the number of subjects that are needed for the junior college assignment from six subjects down to five subjects to allow people to focus more.

So I think it's an interesting, piece, but I think part of it, they were saying is if you, instead of trying everybody to be a generalist and good at multiple subjects, maybe a less, what's the word? Breath. I ask people to focus on, yeah, to have more depth or pursue the passions they want. Or maybe there's a bunch of non academic pursuits they want to achieve that they have just by studying one less subject. So it's an interesting movement.

(27:57) Shiyan Koh: I just think, yeah, I just feel like we need people to have more open ended problems they solve earlier in life. So they can gain that habit, but also that confidence that they can do it. So I don't know, five, six years ago, I ran a project at a local bank. I had a team of very bright, local university students. And the prompt was something like, design new products for the bank, and each team was like a group of university students, and they all had a mentor, like an industry mentor, that was like the role that I was playing. And, they were like, I think third year students, and they were all in finance or business, super bright.

And, it was very funny, because at the beginning they kept, it felt like they were like waiting for me to tell them what the answer is. And I was like, I don't know what the that's the problem, I don't know what the answer is. If we knew the answer, we wouldn't even be here. We actually had to think about like what makes a great new product for the, for the bank? Like, why do we think that? What questions will we ask? And these were all like, these people all went on and worked at bulge bracket banks after this, right? Like I did follow them after that, but it was interesting that was like their default setting was like, okay, adult in the room, tell us what to do. And I really feel like that has to change.

(28:59) Jeremy Au: Ah, it's you might say the book, like Lord of the Flies. Everybody has to figure out how to live on a tropical island together. So now it's like a Lord of the AI Flies. Like, all the youth today must figure out their own approach to surviving in a world of AI and so forth. I just, I guess I'm always a little bit more conservative on public education. Because I think at the end of the day, public education is about teaching the entirety of society. So it's always a bit of a lowest common denominator component, right? It's always going to be something that's, by its nature of regimentation structure, it's always going to be good for 90% of society, right? And to some extent, it's never going to be good for

(29:36) Shiyan Koh: But why would an agency be good for 90% of society?

(29:39) Jeremy Au: Oof. I think there are two answers it's do we really want to raise all kids that have agency? Yes. You say you're Confucianism, you're Asian, you're communitarian, you're

(29:51) Shiyan Koh: Those are not mutually exclusive.

(29:53) Jeremy Au: I can see that. I can see that. I'm not trying to disagree with you, you know, do you really want everybody to have agency? As a parent, I want my child to have agency.

(30:03) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, until they start doing something you don't agree with, lah. That's the point! Then you're like, damn it! They have too much agency!

(30:09) Jeremy Au: That's exactly the point, sorry. Teaching people to have agency means that they are much more able to make their own choices. And a lot of people think they make better choices than what children or teenagers or youth can do. And so as long as you, so people say, I'm happy to have you have agency as long as you make decisions that align with me or neutral to me.

(30:29) Shiyan Koh: I think it's an interesting point, right? Which is part of it is around like values alignment. So when you talk about the Confucianism, communitarianism, things like that, I do think that's important. Actually that's something that I do think that, as a whole, we are stronger than, I think a purely individual approach is not what I would advocate.

(30:45) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(30:45) Shiyan Koh: But I do think that passivity, especially in this era is detrimental to our society. That is like my deeply held belief, which is that we need to raise people, we need to educate people in a way that gives them the skills, but also the shared values, right? Around what does it mean to be a citizen of a small country?

(31:04) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(31:05) Shiyan Koh: And what are our obligations to each other? But also, what are our obligations as citizens to be informed, right? To be aware? That's it takes active work. It's not just Oh, let me just complain about this thing I don't like. So there's this great children's book that my kids have and it's called, "Someone Had to Build the Dream." It's beautifully illustrated, and it's basically a picture book where they go through like cool things like a rollercoaster or a fountain, like different things. And they explain all the people who had to do work to make it happen. And it rhymes, right? And basically the whole thing is, and basically the refrain is, Someone had to build a dream.

And I really like it because it's everything that you see, like around you, someone had to put a lot of bloody effort into it, and so it's like when you are not happy with something, you think there's an alternative, then like you have to be like, okay what would it take to make that happen? How do I like put that into motion? Don't just sit around and complain. Like I just feel like that attitude, if you think about I don't know, like what are they? The Merdeka or the pioneer generation? Yeah.

(32:11) Jeremy Au: Yeah.

(32:11) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Okay. Wise generation or whatever. They're not like, oh woe is me. They're kind of like, oh man, we gotta go do something. So that spirit, I feel like, is that story that we need to like, tell more. And, it's, I think that's important. I think it's essential to our survival, actually.

(32:26) Jeremy Au: Yeah. I think the wrap things up here would be that I think I agree with you. And I think that teaching agency is good. I think the, if you don't teach agency, then effectively you're letting passive people continue being passive. You asked me, does Jeremy, I'll believe in that. I believe that you should teach agency. It's just that I can just empathize with the system folks who are like, but what if they make bad choices? Which is,

(32:47) Shiyan Koh: That's part of being human. That's part of learning.

(32:49) Jeremy Au: Then that's like going all the way back to like Adam and Eve and the Bible says they gave them free choice and they made a bad choice, which is why they had to leave Eden. Anyway, there's so many other origin religious stories, which is like, order is good, but then humans choose to be chaotic and make bad decisions that cost everything, but that's what makes them human. There's a yin and yang of our society, right? People want to have agency and free will, but we also want to make good choices all the time. Such is life. On that note, let's wrap things up and say thank you so much, Shiyan, for sharing.

(33:19) Shiyan Koh: Thanks Jeremy.