Ian Tan

Ian Tan

ST Masterclasses April 2026

It’s been two fun days of conducting the The Straits Times Gen AI Masterclasses in Gen AI – Fundamentals and Advanced. I got to introduce the new image engine in OpenAI‘s ChatGPT (GPT Images 2.0) and for text generation, I think it is…

Newsletter 64 – Have Standards

In this week’s newsletter, I write about the need to hold ourselves to high standards in the age of AI. I also recap what I wrote about the increasing market share of Gemini and Claude, learning motion graphics with Cavalry,…

Newsletter 63 – Digital devaluation

In this week’s newsletter, I ponder on the monetary value of graphic icons vs a custard puff. I also recap what I wrote about Google’s latest integration of NotebookLM into Gemini, how NTU and Google are collaborating on AI literacy,…

Claude Cowork – Annual Leave Spreadsheet

Here’s an spreadsheet that a HR department might use to monitor the amount of annual leave used by the company’s employees. I created this using Claude Cowork after I received a request from an SME’s human resources team to improve…

Newsletter 62 – Good vibrations

I had plenty to say in the past week, so let’s get into the recap. What I’m doing with AI: Google AI Studio is getting more powerful for vibe coding. I rebuilt my Chinese language flashcard app to allow for…

Claude Cowork – wonder and sadness

“Hey Claude Cowork, take this PDF of my school’s curriculum. Turn it into a Word doc with the same layout, and translate to Chinese. Check all the words online to make sure they are current.” The job was done in…

Newsletter 61 – Seek out the Sifus

I once knew a person who trained others in the retail trade. After observing this person for some time, I realised that he was just making things up as he went along. He had no formal training in retail marketing,…

MOE Canteen Chats

I was recently invited to be part of the video podcast Canteen Chats with Lion Mums to talk about the education arms race in Singapore. Thank you to the Ministry of Education, Singapore (MOE) for giving me the opportunity to share my…

a16z Top 100 apps report – Mar 2026

The latest Andreessen Horowitz a16z report on the top 100 Gen AI apps is here, and there is so much to unpack I could write a week’s worth of posts. What caught my eye: 1. AI-enabled apps like Canva and…

Newsletter 58 – I have a robot master

A month ago, I began serving a robot. I bought my first robot vacuum (Xiaomi S40 Pro) after years of never thinking about buying one. There’s an annoying residential construction project going on next to my apartment block and it’s…