Testimonials
There is much emphasis today on STEM education, but we must remember that one of its goals is to develop new technologies for people and society. Yet current STEM education does not address these issues directly. As a result, we are often designing for society without a deep understanding of people, society, or culture – or of history, art, and music, or ethics and philosophy. The outcome is a world designed for technology, not for people.
One interesting consequence of recent advances in generative AI is that, as these systems take over many mundane technical activities, the social sciences and humanities become more important than ever. As civilizations adapt to these new technologies, the social sciences and humanities will only grow in importance.
Professor Don Norman
Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, University of California, San Diego
The proposed course content is sound and unique, and its introduction is timely. It will be one of the first of its kind in Singapore and the Region. It aims to weave the subject of Humanities Study seamlessly into its core curriculum even while teaching AI and technological design. This is so important at this time when the global trend is to compete to come up with more and more innovations in AI and then study how industry and society may fit into the new inventions. Hence it recognizes that the future of AI must be guided from the first design by fundamental values and high moral principles. It is a sound approach.
The course, in my view, will ensure that Singapore not only produces technological capable graduates, but it also ensures that our future AI-enabled graduate leaders and policy-makers will develop our society and our industry with the right ethics and sound values even as we strive for continuous national and economic progress.
Most of all, this course has the potential to teach and train graduates who will anticipate future problems and emergent issues in society even before these occur and hence able to lead in innovative solutions and transformative designs.
Mr Lau Wah Ming
Board Director, Kota Capital, Former Secretary to the Cabinet
In an era where AI is reshaping economies and societies, the launch of SUTD’s Societal and Systems Intelligence and Human-Centred Intelligence tracks within its Design AI degree programme could not be timelier. These programmes equip students with essential real-world skills, from harnessing AI for ethical economic modelling and data-driven decision-making, to fostering empathy-driven design and human-AI collaboration. Graduates from this programme will be primed to succeed in a wide variety of sectors that demand these capabilities, driving sustainable, human-centred innovation that addresses global challenges head-on.
Mr Andrew Tan
Co-Founder and Group President of Moladin
The DAI programme is creating a new kind of talent — innovators who combine AI fluency with economic insight and human understanding. This is exactly the skillset needed to drive meaningful innovation, build resilient businesses, and shape sustainable growth in the AI economy.
Ms Jenny Lee
Senior Managing Partner, Granite Asia Capital Pte Ltd
This programme blends foundational knowledge with real-world applications and examines the impact of AI on society. As someone with 15 years in IT, collaborating extensively with Product Managers, I believe this innovative degree is invaluable preparation for future PMs, lawmakers, or AI marketers. I’d gladly hire such graduates.
Mr Andrey Leskov
Co-founder and CEO, illumi.one
What we need are not just tool-users, but thinkers and problem-solvers who can design technology for the benefit of the next generation. As a business owner, these are exactly the graduates I want on my team—to ensure that our technology serves with empathy. I even look forward to hiring from this programme today!
Ms Lingyi Chang
Co-founder and CPO, illumi.one
As organisations increasingly deploy AI in complex, real-world environments, there is a growing need for talent that can combine strong technical capabilities with systems thinking and deep understanding of human behaviour. SUTD’s supercharged DAI degree, with its new Societal and Systems Intelligence and Human-Centred Intelligence tracks, develops exactly these Design AI competencies. Graduates trained to integrate AI, design thinking and domain knowledge are better equipped to design solutions that are practical, responsible and deployable at scale—skills that are increasingly valued at Certis Cisco as we continue to transform security, operations and services through technology.
Dr Jaclyn Lee
Group Chief Human Resources Officer and Chief Executive, Certis Corporate University
This supercharged DAI programme lets us take charge of our future with AI. These days, it’s not just about what’s technically possible – it’s about what’s actually worth building, and for whom. By leading with humanities thinking, ethics, culture and philosophy, and backing it with tech tools, we frame problems right from the start and create real impact. The industry Master Classes will keep us sharp and ahead of the curve.
Joshua Cheng
SUTD DAI student, Year 2
It’s been an amazing experience working with the students. They showed professionalism in both technical and project management aspects which are essential skills in today’s design and tech industry. It is always an eye opener to hear fresh perspectives from them and the management is impressed with the quality of ideas. Look forward to more opportunities to work with them!
DBS Bank Ltd
We are especially pleased with the team’s presentation. I would like to commend their efforts and am greatly impressed to see the team’s prototype and their ability to promptly come up with an improved design following our trial.
dnata Singapore Pte Ltd
The DAI looks to me an excellent program to generate the future AI talent for business and consultancy.
Mr Hong Cao
Head of Data Science, Ernst & Young LLP
We started a collaborative industry project with SUTD DAI students. We gave them the design brief, afterwards there was a site visit. We only had 3 milestone meetings with them, and the students surprised us with the results of the project. They showed a strong design methodology in their approach to the project and the final prototype was a working conceptual model. We were impressed also with the students’ presentation skills, and they show good teamwork. We shall look forward to more collaboration with SUTD and also getting them to intern with our companies. We believe this is a WIN-WIN for both industry and SUTD.
Meiban Group Ltd
The students were proactive and were able to find and create solutions on their own. They worked well together, understood the brief and came out with a good product!
Monstyr Pte Ltd
We are very happy with the idea that the team have came up with and with what they have learned and achieved in such a short period of time.
P&G Singapore
SUTD’s new programme will equip students with much needed complementary skills in design and AI. This gives them an edge to impact the world.
Dr Terence Hung
Chief of Future Intelligence Technologies, Rolls Royce
AI is a new area. Designing AI into a traditional engineering system is often an afterthought. An AI-capable system should incorporate AI into its design at the onset. It will benefit the industry if AI & DI can be fused seamlessly into all AI product designs.
Dr Peh Chin Hwee
Vice President, Head of Intelligent Systems (Robotics & Autonomous, Systems), ST Engineering
SUTD’s AI degree is relevant in building a pipeline of multi-disciplinary data scientists and AI engineers.
Mr Johnson Poh
Executive Director & Head Enterprise AI, UOB Group, UOB