GO Forward with AI is a two-year regional initiative from Grab and OpenAI designed to teach practical AI skills to 30,000 of Grab’s driver, delivery and merchant partners across Southeast Asia. The programme, which begins in Singapore, offers half-day, in-person workshops built on the OpenAI Academy curriculum and adapted to the real-world needs of platform workers and small merchants. Organisers say the aim is to turn interest in AI into concrete, usable capabilities that participants can apply immediately to their businesses and daily work.
The workshops are structured to give participants hands-on experience with conversational models such as ChatGPT and the workplace-focused ChatGPT Work. Sessions combine demonstrations with guided exercises tailored to everyday business decisions. Participants practise tasks that include analysing sales patterns, planning promotions, building simple websites and converting sales data into dashboards. Grab will also train GrabAcademy instructors to help scale the programme over the two-year rollout.
Grab’s own research helped shape the initiative. A survey of driver-partners in Singapore found roughly half already reported using AI tools, with ChatGPT the most widely known. Among those not yet using AI, 87% said they were open to trying such tools. Many partners expressed interest in growing a current business or exploring new ventures—needs the programme is explicitly designed to address by focusing on practical, immediately applicable skills.
The training emphasises accessible, low-barrier ways for individuals to make routine business decisions more confidently and independently. For drivers and delivery partners, conversational AI can help explore and refine small business ideas or improve daily planning. For merchants, the tools can reveal trends in sales data or support preparations for demand shifts. Trainers plan to centre sessions on relevance, showing how modest, straightforward AI uses can support day-to-day operations without requiring technical backgrounds.
GO Forward with AI builds on existing work between OpenAI and Grab. Since 2024, Grab has integrated OpenAI models into products such as the Driver AI Assistant, which the company says has reached nearly 500,000 drivers. The new programme gives partners longer, guided opportunities to apply similar capabilities themselves, including agentic features available in ChatGPT Work, to address problems encountered in their work or small enterprises.
Organisers stress that the project is about expanding economic opportunity by equipping individuals with skills they can use without large teams or specialist knowledge. Practical exercises are aimed at levelling the playing field so platform workers and small merchants can perform basic analysis, develop ideas and plan next steps using AI. The programme’s local adaptation is intended to make training relevant to the variety of tasks partners carry out across different markets.
The initial rollout will focus on Singapore with stages planned to reach Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines later in the year. Malaysia and Vietnam are scheduled for 2027. As the programme expands, organizers say they will continue adapting the curriculum to reflect local contexts and the types of work participants do. Grab and OpenAI expect the staged approach to allow iteration based on early workshop feedback and to ensure content remains practical and grounded in participants’ needs.
Early participants who attended pilot workshops reported tangible outcomes: moving from ideation to execution on business ideas and using AI to make more informed daily decisions for their enterprises. The combination of short, in-person workshops and follow-up support from trained GrabAcademy staff is intended to help convert learning into sustained practice rather than one-off exposure.
By pairing brief, practical training with tools already integrated into the Grab platform, the programme aims to make AI skills directly actionable for platform partners. Organisers present GO Forward with AI as a step toward broader accessibility—giving people tools and guided practice so they can apply AI to improve efficiency, spot opportunities and plan next steps without needing technical teams.
As GO Forward with AI moves beyond Singapore, its success will likely be measured by how well participants translate training into ongoing business practices and by the programme’s adaptability to local market conditions. For now, the initiative signals a targeted effort by Grab and OpenAI to make AI training more practical and inclusive for the region’s drivers, delivery workers and small merchants.
Source: Read the original source
Leave a Reply