Newsletter 52
I chopped up my first melon yesterday. It was a Hami melon and I didn’t know how to check for ripeness until I had finished the cutting. Somehow, I’ve lived almost half a century and had never done this before.…
Ian Tan
Testing for human x AI skills
I was listening to a news feature which talked about how more companies want to hire people with “AI skills”. That’s a pretty broad requirement. Is it enough just to know how to write a prompt in ChatGPT? No, I…
Google Gems go Opal
Google has just rolled out a new type of Gem in the Gemini app- custom mini apps where you can design the workflow and iterate each step in specific ways. Gems were originally custom chatbots which I teach in my…
ChatGPT Image 1.5
OpenAI just released ChatGPT Image 1.5, and while it is better, it’s not as good as Google’s Nano Banana Pro. With some initial testing, I found that: 🔷 ChatGPT isn’t good at adapting my facial features to different scenarios. Sometimes, the…
GO-FAR 2025 published stories
Five months ago, 13 undergrads, along with Samuel He and I, travelled to the border of Thailand and Myanmar, to a town called Mae Sot for the “Going Overseas for Advanced Reporting” (GO-FAR) module at Wee Kim Wee School of…
Newsletter 51
As you can see, I gave up trying to come up with today’s newsletter title. I’m writing a dissertation this weekend so my mind is completely choked. Anyway, let’s jump into a recap of the things I wrote about over…
Workshop with RSIS ambassadors
My final Gen AI workshop for the year was with the passionate brand ambassadors from RSIS | S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies – Daisry OBAL, Jelvin Jose, Anna Monique Bauer 白安娜, and Khemachart Petpraist. RSIS is a global graduate…
Intent, Skills and Algos
INTENT, SKILLS AND ALGOS: Yesterday, I was taking photos at the launch of Impact in Southeast Asia (i-SEA) Fellowship Programme at my school, while demonstrating to a new friend how a photographer combines human intention, photographic skill and “algorithm literacy”.…
Editing Infographics with Google AI
In the age of Gen AI, you need to be able to generate content, take them apart, and repurpose them for your own use. Here’s how I adapted a Google Gemini infographic for the Mandarin edition of The Straits Times Masterclass in…
ST Gen AI Masterclass – Chinese Edition
Congratulations to the first batch of The Straits Times Generative AI Masterclass in Chinese! We had a great time yesterday learning the fundamentals of Gen AI and exploring the possibilities of today’s most popular Gen AI apps like ChatGPT, Gemini,…