SMART CITIES · AI · SUSTAINABILITY
Willy Tai
My Philosophy

“AI should make a human's judgment better, or replace only the decisions that were never judgment to begin with. It should not pretend to be the human.”

i.

Re-engineer, then automate

A bad process automated is a bad process at scale. Fix the decision structure first; the agents come after.

ii.

Govern by design

Safeguards belong in the architecture, built as risk tiers, gates and tamper-evident logs. A policy PDF nobody reads does not protect anyone.

iii.

Human judgment first

Agents should make a person's judgment better, or take only the decisions that were never judgment to begin with.

Background

I sit at an unusual intersection: a finance and assurance background, a computing education, and a decade running complex operations. I trained as a Chartered Accountant and a Certified Internal Auditor, took an MSc in Computing at NUS, and I'm completing a PhD on the governance of technology through its lifecycle.

That combination is the point. I understand controls from the inside, so I know what governed has to mean. I build the systems myself, in code, so the governance is working software rather than a policy document. And I've run real operations, so I design for handoffs, exceptions and people, not the happy path.

I help regulated organisations decide what to automate, what to keep under human judgment, and how to prove the whole thing held up. Every claim on this site is backed by a demo you can run in your browser.

The work comes in three forms. I meet clients and carry engagements from scoping to a closed business outcome. I build internal capability, the adoption playbooks and secured governance processes a firm needs before AI touches anything regulated. And I teach: eight years of learning and development work, currently teaching practising accountants through ISCA and supervising capstone projects at Nanyang Polytechnic, with the PhD completing in 2027. A capability that is not taught does not survive its builder, so the training is part of the offer.

CA-trained CIA-trained · reactivating MSc Computing, NUS PhD candidate, technology governance ISCA course facilitator NYP capstone supervisor Singapore