{"id":15810,"date":"2026-10-08T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/?p=15810"},"modified":"2026-10-06T16:07:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T08:07:30","slug":"what-ai-cant-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/2026\/10\/08\/what-ai-cant-do\/","title":{"rendered":"What AI Can\u2019t Do"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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For most doctoral candidates, having two years of research rendered obsolete overnight would be a nightmare. For Mr Xue Wen Tan (Engineering \u201819, PhD \u201825), it became another problem to solve.<\/p>

Two years into his PhD at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Mr Tan was researching relation extraction, a specialised natural language processing task. Then large language models such as ChatGPT transformed what AI could do. Work that had once required specialised models could suddenly be performed by much more general systems. His research was no longer relevant.<\/p>

\u201cOf course, anyone would feel disappointed,\u201d he says. But dwelling on what had happened would not change it. \u201cI\u2019d rather use that energy to fix what\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>

So he pivoted to generative AI, researching how it could be used to combat scams by generating realistic scam-like messages to train people to recognise fraud. It was a practical response to a problem.<\/p>

\u201cIf I had not changed the scope of my research, I would not have got my PhD,\u201d he says, chuckling. It was a hard lesson in \u201cadapt or die\u201d.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Mr Tan presenting on Heuristic and Sytematic Information Processing.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The human factor
<\/strong>His career has, Mr Tan jokes, been a tour of whatever technology happens to be trendy.<\/p>

After graduating from NUS with First Class Honours in Electrical Engineering in 2019, Mr Tan joined DBS Bank\u2019s SEED Graduate Associate Programme, working in banking technology at a time when fintech was becoming the fashionable frontier.<\/p>

\u201cEveryone was talking about Bitcoin, crypto and NFTs,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>

Two years later, he returned to NUS for its inaugural PhD programme in Digital Financial Technology, combining finance, computer science and AI. Having worked in industry first, he hoped to solve real-world problems, applying what he knew about businesses to spot the gaps and \u201cconnect the dots better\u201d.<\/p>

That said, in the working world, achieving an objective is not always the same as achieving it well.<\/p>

In an organisation, Mr Tan says, it is possible to meet a target if everyone works overtime or their concerns are downplayed. The objective has been achieved, but the process may leave people unhappy and make the result unsustainable.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Mr Tan (left) at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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AI, he observes, is naturally objective-driven. Give it a goal and it will optimise towards it. Humans are messier. They have competing ideas, emotions and needs. They want their suggestions to be heard, be it good or bad.<\/p>

\u201cHumans are not very optimal creatures,\u201d he says.<\/p>

Yet that inefficiency has value. People still need someone to listen to them, acknowledge their views and build trust. Those human interactions can take longer and may not be the most efficient route to an outcome, but they are part of how organisations work.<\/p>

It is a distinction Mr Tan is reluctant to make too confidently. AI is evolving too quickly for anyone to know exactly what it will eventually be capable of.<\/p>

Still, he believes human judgement will remain important as AI becomes more capable.<\/p>

For all his academic and professional achievements, Mr Tan does not describe himself as exceptionally gifted.<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m not a genius,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not someone who can learn things very quickly.\u201d<\/p>

What he has learnt instead is how to learn fast \u2014 and how to sift through the enormous amount of information now available to find what matters. In the age of AI, he believes that ability may matter more than knowing any particular tool or technique, since both can become obsolete.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Mr Tan (left) at the NUS Fintech Summit.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Building for a human world<\/strong><\/p>


<\/strong>Today, Mr Tan works as an AI scientist at Singapore\u2019s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), contributing to projects investigating how AI and autonomous technologies can be deployed in the real world.<\/p>

One project explores how robots and humans might coexist safely in a district, contributing to a future where humans can trust and be supported by robots in their daily lives. The work appeals to him because it shows the real-world impact of technology.<\/p>

His ambitions for AI are similarly understated. He hopes to play a role in helping Singapore deploy AI safely and scaling AI\u2019s use effectively.<\/p>

It is a modest ambition from someone who has spent much of his career moving towards the next technological frontier.<\/p>

\u201cYou cannot avoid AI,\u201d he notes. \u201cIt\u2019s like electricity in your life every day.\u201d<\/p>

The challenge is to remain capable ourselves \u2014 to question the answers from a machine, make our own judgements and decide what is worth handing over.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Three reflections on living with AI<\/strong><\/p>

Role of education
<\/strong>If AI makes knowledge increasingly accessible, Mr Tan believes education will have to offer something deeper: teaching students how to judge whether information is actually useful or correct.<\/p>

He likens it to learning the violin. Online tutorials can teach technique, but an experienced teacher can hear whether the performance is good. For Mr Tan, that human perspective \u2014 developed through years of experience \u2014 is what gives education enduring value.<\/p>

Think for yourself
<\/strong>Mr Tan is less concerned about people using AI as a productivity tool than about what happens when they stop knowing what to think. \u201cSome people cannot write an email without AI anymore,\u201d he observes. \u201cWhich I think is very sad.\u201d<\/p>

What is initially convenience could gradually become dependence \u2014 with people parroting AI-generated answers rather than developing their own views.<\/p>

It\u2019s the algorithm
<\/strong>His most immediate concern may be closer to home. Mr Tan laughs as he recounts confiscating his parents\u2019 phones after they became addicted to streams of AI-generated videos.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s not that they don\u2019t want to control themselves,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the algorithm. It\u2019s too good.\u201d He hopes to see regulation in the future. \u201cAll these videos have no mental vitamins; they cause your brain to rot. It\u2019s something I worry about.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr Xue Wen Tan (Engineering \u201819, PhD \u201825) became an AI scientist after graduating from NUS\u2019 inaugural Digital Financial Technology PhD programme. But as his immersion in AI deepened, he began to think more about what AI should \u2014 and should not \u2014 replace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":15988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15810"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15997,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15810\/revisions\/15997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}