Singapore Foreign Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan shared how he built and uses a personal AI assistant powered by open-source tools, saying AI can improve productivity, decision-making, and everyday workflows.
Dr Vivian Balakrishnan delivered a speech at the AI Engineer Singapore on 16 May 2026, where he spoke about his personal experiments with artificial intelligence and the importance of practical AI deployment.
Dr Balakrishnan described himself as a “retired eye surgeon” who still enjoys building and fixing things. He said he had spent the last three months developing a personal AI agent using open-source tools and platforms to help manage his demanding work schedule.
According to Dr Balakrishnan, the AI system helps him handle large amounts of information while travelling and meeting hundreds of people across different countries. He explained that the assistant supports tasks such as drafting speeches, analysing information, summarising documents, and preparing parliamentary responses.
The Foreign Minister highlighted three main lessons from his experience with AI. First, he said technology can help outsource many tasks, but personal understanding and accountability cannot be replaced. Second, he stressed that the true value of AI comes when ordinary workers use the technology to improve their own jobs and workflows. Third, he said the barriers to using AI tools have fallen significantly because many useful technologies are already available.
During the speech, Dr Balakrishnan revealed that his personal AI system runs on a small Raspberry Pi device with only eight gigabytes of RAM. He assembled the system using tools such as NanoClaw, Ollama, whisper.cpp, Obsidian, and mnemon.
He said the project showed how accessible AI technology has become, adding that he was not building new AI models but simply combining existing tools to improve productivity.
Dr Balakrishnan also discussed concerns about security, energy use, and overdependence on large language models. He warned that future AI development could be affected by cybersecurity issues, commercial competition, and geopolitical tensions.
The minister said Singapore should focus on deploying AI widely across society rather than competing at the frontier of model development. He called for a decentralised and ground-up approach to AI adoption so that businesses, workers, and communities can benefit directly from the technology.
Source: MFA
