I read a CNA article this week and I've been thinking about it ever since.
NUS just announced that every single incoming freshman — all 7,700 of them — must complete a compulsory AI module within their first two weeks of university. They're also giving the entire student body access to ChatGPT Edu from August 31st. The provost called it a "significant but necessary" investment.
Significant. Necessary. In 2026. Today.
Here's what this tells me. Singapore's top university is scrambling to make sure 18-year-olds know how to use AI before they fall behind the rest of the world. The module is called Applied Generative AI: From Prompting to Evaluation and it is made up of three hours of online videos and a two-hour workshop. This is compulsory — and to land the point, all requirements must be completed within the first two weeks of the semester.
This is clear signalling. Understanding and using AI is no longer a good-to-have. It has become baseline. Before any other modules are taught, all university students need to learn AI.
So What Does That Mean for Our Children?
I think about my own kids when I read things like this. My eldest is sitting for PSLE this year — but I remember the day he was born just like it was yesterday. In a blink of an eye it will be his time to enter university, and I want to make sure that by the time my child walks into a lecture hall, he won't be playing catch up.
In a few years' time, AI literacy won't be a differentiator. It will be the baseline — like knowing how to use PowerPoint and Excel was for us. And if that's true, then the kids who learn it at 10 — building things they actually care about, getting comfortable with the tools, making mistakes when the stakes are low — those kids are going to show up to university very differently from the ones who encounter it for the first time in a compulsory two-hour workshop.
One group has an advantage. The other will be playing catch-up.
What We Do Differently
This is exactly why I started Dreambuilders.sg.
Kids come up with a problem they actually care about — and we say: build it. Use the AI to help you. Describe what you want, see what comes out, fix what's wrong, and ship it.
This is vibe coding: creativity-first, AI-assisted building. Your child doesn't learn about AI from the outside. They use it from the inside, to make something real.
By the end of three mornings, they have a live, deployed app or website with a URL they can share — and they leave confident, knowing that the possibilities are endless.
The Gap Is Already Opening
The NUS announcement is one piece of a bigger picture. There's already a national plan to roll out AI skills training across all polytechnics and ITEs from 2027. This is moving fast. The universities know it. The polytechnics know it.
The question for us as parents is just: do we want our kids to be the ones who started early?
I know my answer. It's why I built this.