Lasallian Shares Insight on Future in Human-Machine Augmentation

Our University and Scholarship team held the 4th SJI Professional Speaker Series on 11 March that featured Mr Oliver Tian, who spoke on “Skills of the Future in Human-Machine Augmentation”. An alumnus of St Patrick's School, Mr Tian is an advisory consultant to both local and international startups and holds a number of concurrent pro bono appointments with non-profit organizations including Honorary Advisor, Asia Pacific Assistive Robotics Association; Vice-Chair, International Alliance of Robotic Associations; Vice-President, Global Robot Cluster and the Advisory Board Member (Responsible Technology Institute, University of Oxford).

The SJI Professional Speaker Series aims to expose our youths to renowned professionals who have not only made a mark in their respective professional fields but have also used their resources, skills and talent to add social and economic value to the community. As the salt and shakers in society, they are a force for good locally and overseas, hence worth emulating. Mr Tian is one of those successful technopreneurs who has successfully combined his advanced technology expertise with his keen entrepreneurial skill to devise innovations that create economic and social benefits for the end-users.

Mr Tian spoke on how humans can collaborate with machines to enhance human capabilities as well as the critical skills of the future needed to understand, explore and leverage technology to help increase human potential and benefit society. He provided the students with a foretaste of what the future marketplace will be like as companies adopt and integrate digital technology and end-to-end seamless artificial intelligence platforms into their operations such as the cognitive AI employee – "AMELIA", who is able to work continually 24/7 throughout the year. His advanced technological insights and wide experience enthralled his young audience, as evidenced by the active Q&A session following his address.

About 50 Year 6 students attended the talk which was also live-streamed to all Year 5 and 6 students. Benjamin Wong (ML613) said, “This talk was one of the best I had participated in as it was very thought-provoking and it gave us a very insightful glimpse of the future”.

Indeed, Mr Tian’s parting exhortation to his SJI audience was to "Dream BIG, Think REAL and stay HUNGRY" to inspire them to stay relevant and nimble amidst rapidly evolving technological advancements, as our youths would be the next generation workforce to lead this human-machine augmentation.