GOVERNED · RELIABLE · EXPLAINABLE
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.

Chartered Accountant Certified Internal Auditor MSc Computing, NUS PhD candidate, technology governance ISCA course facilitator NYP capstone supervisor Singapore