SINGAPORE - Tech giant Google is looking to fill more than 150 local job openings, most of which are related to technology and engineering, as it deepens its research and development (R&D) commitments to Singapore.

Some of these positions are for a newly unveiled Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre of Excellence for Safety, whose ambit includes tackling new risks associated with agentic AI and content verification.

Unlike traditional AI, new agentic AI systems with the ability to understand natural language can reason and independently complete tasks on behalf of users.

“As AI advances, we need to continue to do even more to get ahead of bad actors and empower our users,” said Google’s vice-president of trust and safety Laurie Richardson on Feb 10, in announcing the setting up of the centre.

The 150 jobs were listed on Google’s career website, as seen by The Straits Times on Feb 10. More than half of these are technical roles including customer solutions engineers, data centre technicians and product managers.

The tech giant declined to reveal how many of the listed vacancies are for the newly-opened AI centre, but said that the centre will be helmed by a new team of research scientists, data scientists and security engineers.

These employees will have their job cut out for them including ring-fencing AI agents to prevent unauthorised actions or potential damage.

“For instance, you don’t want an agent that is created for a very narrow purpose to have access to a wide swath of data on your phone,” said Google’s vice-president of trust and safety Laurie Richardson, during an interview on Feb 10.

This could be in the form of an agent that helps to make health appointments, that should not be allowed to access a user’s payment details.

“We want to make sure that it receives consent in real-time, before it can broaden the actions it takes,” said Ms Richardson.

The centr...