Introduction to AI Readiness Index

When we conceived and developed the AI Readiness Index (AIRI) at AI Singapore in 2019, it was born out of necessity. After hundreds of engagements with companies, we noticed a pattern – organizations needed a structured way to assess and improve their AI readiness. But more importantly, they needed to understand that not every organization needs to become AI Competent.

Most SMEs can reap the benefits of AI simply by transitioning from AI Unaware to AI Aware.

AI Aware companies do not have dedicated AI teams that develop AI applications for their own use, but are instead savvy users of AI tools and applications and know how and where to use AI, and collaborate with AI vendors. For instance, through AI-powered apps and platforms to broaden customer reach via smart omni-channel marketing, improve customer service and experience with AI chatbots, utilize AI-integrated productivity tools such as Microsoft Copilot to enhance knowledge workers’ productivity, and so on.

As I wrote in “AI-First Nation“, one of the biggest misconceptions about AI adoption is that organizations need a team of AI engineers and data scientists. This could not be further from the truth. What they need is to understand where they are in their AI journey and what level of AI readiness makes business sense for them.

5 Pillar and 12 Dimensions of AIRI

What made AIRI attractive was its simplicity and practicality. We distilled years of experience working with companies into five key pillars split into 12 questions or dimensions.

It would take no more than 10 minutes to complete the questions, and the user will be presented with a report detailing his or her organisation’s readiness along the 5 pillars and scored into whether they are AI Unaware, AI Aware, AI Ready or AI Competent.

Pillar	Dimension	Remarks
Organizational Readiness	1. Management Support 2. AI Literacy 3. AI Talent 4. Employee Acceptance of AI 5. Experimentation Culture	Critical foundation – measures if an organization has leadership support, talent and culture ready for AI transformation.
Ethics and Governance Readiness	6. AI Governance 7. AI Risk Control	Framework to ensure responsible AI development with proper risk controls.
Business Value Readiness	8. Business Use Case	A clear business case and ROI for AI adoption must be developed.
Data Readiness	9. Data Quality 10. Reference Data	Quality data and proper data management are prerequisites for successful AI.
Infrastructure Readiness	11. Machine Learning Infrastructure 12. Data Infrastructure	Technical foundation needed to support AI development and deployment.

Maturity Levels

Our goal is to get as many organisations from AI Unaware to AI Aware, to become smart and savvy users of AI applications and software. We expect many organizations, including a significant number of our SMEs, to become AI-aware. This level of awareness is sufficient, as it enables them to unlock considerable value from AI by being AI-aware.

Some will become AI Ready and fewer will become AI Competent. AI maturity level needs to be driven by the business objectives and needs, and not some fancy certification or business award.

Maturity Level	Characteristics
AI Unaware	– Limited AI knowledge – Basic digitisation only – Waits for vendor recommendations
AI Aware	– Basic AI knowledge – Actively seeks AI solutions – Uses commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions
AI Ready	– Has implementation capabilities to integrate AI models – Works with external partners – Ramping up internal AI team
AI Competent	– Has internal AI team – Capabilities to build end-to-end AI/ML pipelines – Can develop bespoke AI solutions with strategic intent and objectives

The AIRI Journey Goes Global

Serbia

When Serbia approached us three years ago to ask for the use of AIRI to help their SMEs assess their AI readiness, it marked a pivotal moment. They became the first country in the world outside Singapore to use AIRI. They needed a simple, scalable, business-friendly, and practical tool to quickly assess their SMEs’ AI maturity, enabling the development of targeted programs to help their SMEs navigate the AI landscape.

At that time, AI Singapore’s website and domain hosted AIRI, and we did not want to host Serbia’s SME’s data when the survey launched for practical reasons (costs and GDPR). Hence, we created a standalone version of AIRI which we could send to Serbia to host and run on their own servers. We made this standalone version easy to use as a template, and countries need only change the logo, colour scheme and report details to get their own version of AIRI up and running in a few days.

GPAI

My roles in GPAI, co-chairing the I&C WG and co-leading the SME AI adoption committee, gave me opportunities to showcase AI Singapore’s initiatives.

Besides delivering  a set of report with recommendations to GPAI member countries, the SME committee actualized this set of recommendations as a production ready AI4SME portal. The AI4SME portal, developed by me over several weekends as a prototype and later with the help of some of my engineers into a production-ready portal, encapsulates all of the report’s recommendations.

Sn	Recommendation	AI4SME Feature
1	SMEs need a simple and quick way to know their AI maturity in order to know how (what and where) to start their AI transformation and journey	AI Maturity Index (AIMIND) which is based on AI Singapore’s AI Readiness Index. Each country will change the AIMIND report to reflect local country programmes.
2	A list of curated and validated AI Solution Provider	Solution Provider Maturity Index (SPMIND) contributed by France.AI assesses how ready and suitable an AI Solution Provider is to service the SMEs. Countries can use these questions or layer on additional audits as required by local best or mandated practices.
3	A marketplace to match SMEs to these curated AI Solution Provider	A simple use case listing (marketplace) with semantic search to match AI Solution Provider and their contributed Use Cases to SME’s search query.
4	SME learning resources.	We are contributing AI For Everyone (SME Edition) from Singapore as a base resource. Countries adopting it will need to localise for local context and language.

The AI4SME portal encapsulating AIRI is now live in 4 countries: Singapore, Poland, Serbia and France. Many more GPAI member countries are in discussion with us to onboard the portal in their own country, which means by end of 2025, AIRI would be truly global.

GPAI held their annual Summit in Belgrade this year, where Serbia is the host and in-coming Chair of GPAI for 2025. I was part of the panel that spoke about “The Role of AI in Job Creation and Economic Growth”, and shared how AI Singapore’s various initiatives like AIRI, AI For Everyone, AI Apprenticeship Programme (AIAP) and 100E ensured that no one gets left behind in this AI tsunami from an individual to the smallest of the SMEs.

This is a testament of AI Singapore’s global impact and reach.

Looking Forward

As we continue sharing our frameworks and methodologies worldwide, our mission remains unchanged – to democratize AI knowledge and ensure AI benefits everyone.

The future of AI adoption is not about every organization becoming AI Competent. It is about organizations finding their optimal level of AI readiness and executing their AI strategies effectively for the business outcome they want. As more countries and organizations adopt AIRI, we are seeing this pragmatic approach adopted.

In my role as Co-Chair of GPAI’s Innovation and Commercialisation Working Group, I am excited to see how AIRI will continue growing and helping organizations worldwide. By end-2025, we expect over 30 countries in GPAI to adopt the AI4SME portal and hence AIRI, marking a significant step toward responsible and practical AI adoption globally.

Remember, the goal is not to make every organisation AI Competent. The goal is to help organisations become AI Ready at a level that makes sense for their business. That is the true measure of successful AI transformation.