On the AI Perspective of Dr. Tan Beng Huat, Founder of ICONADA

A Humanistic Technology Perspective with Critical Awareness and Forward-Looking Cultural Practice

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly permeates creative production, academic research, and industrial practice, the question of how to balance efficiency, creativity, and humanistic values has become unavoidable for cultural–creative professionals and knowledge workers alike. As a long-standing scholar and practitioner engaged in digital storytelling, cultural and creative industry research, and community-based knowledge platforms, Dr. Tan Beng Huat, founder of ICONADA, does not approach AI from a position of technological optimism nor conservative resistance.

Instead, his stance represents a humanistic technology perspective—one that is critically aware of risks while actively engaging with real-world transformation.

Drawing from his recent writings, platform initiatives, and public reflections on ICONADA, Dr. Tan’s views on AI may be understood through several interrelated dimensions that offer valuable foresight for professionals operating at the intersection of culture and AI.

1. Confronting Technological Disruption: AI as a “Stress Test” for the Humanities

Dr. Tan does not deny the profound structural impact AI has on the humanities and educational systems. On the contrary, he regards AI as a form of “stress-testing mechanism” that compels the humanities to rearticulate their relevance and core value.

In his article “The University of Ethnic Enterprise”, published on the evening of June 20, 2023, on ICONADA’s special page “Rural Channel – Belt and Road: Old Regions, New Economy”, Dr. Tan argues that for individuals to regain a sense of agency amid global uncertainty, continuous learning is virtually the only viable path. Citing Andrew Sheng, he observes that much of the world’s best educational content is now freely accessible online; the decisive factor lies in one’s capacity for goal-oriented self-adjustment and mental renewal.

Within this context, AI should not be seen as a replacement for human thinking, but rather as a cognitive organization device—one that can help structure learning materials, provide preliminary analytical frameworks, and interact with vast online datasets. This allows individuals to move more swiftly into phases that genuinely require personal creativity, value judgment, and practical application.

For scholars and practitioners in the humanities, this perspective is particularly significant. AI accelerates the obsolescence of purely information-organizing skills while simultaneously pushing humanistic disciplines back to their core strengths: interpretive capacity, deep insight, and value orientation.

2. From Tools to Narrative Power: The Core Competitiveness of Creative Industries in the AI Era

Dr. Tan places special emphasis on narrative power as a decisive factor in the age of AI. Since its inception, ICONADA has been positioned not merely as a content-publishing platform, but as a “meeting place for people with stories to share.”

With AI increasingly participating in creative processes, this positioning proves even more forward-looking. Dr. Tan contends that future differentiation in the creative industries will not depend on who can generate the most content, but on who can construct narratives that are affctively resonant, culturally rooted, and socially empowering.

He frequently frames cultural creation through three interrelated dimensions:

• Affects: the capacity of content to evoke emotional and sentimental resonance;
  
  
• Percepts: the formation of distinctive sensory and cognitive experiences;
  
  
• Powers: the ability of narratives to inspire action or transformation at the individual or community level.

Within this framework, AI is not merely a text- or image-generating tool, but an integral component in the design of affective and experiential cultural production, assisting in narrative refinement, rhythm modulation, and cross-media translation.

3. Digital Curation and Platform Transformation: From Content Production to Knowledge Choreography

Dr. Tan’s understanding of AI also extends to digital curation and platform governance. He recognizes that in an age of information overload, the scarcest resource is no longer content itself, but knowledge that can be meaningfully understood, disseminated, and transformed.

Accordingly, ICONADA has, in recent years, actively pursued platform transformation through mobile applications, digital visual media, and initiatives such as ICONADA MOOCs. These efforts aim to reorganize dispersed texts, images, and research outputs into learning experiences with clear knowledge pathways and narrative rhythms.

This approach implicitly reflects a concept that may be described as “knowledge choreography”—a process in which AI has the potential to become a key facilitator for future digital curation, sequencing, and learning experience design.

4. An Unwavering Core Philosophy: Technology Must Ultimately “Touch the Soul”

Despite his openness to technological innovation, Dr. Tan maintains a clear value boundary: technology must ultimately serve content that is capable of touching the human soul.

Whether reflected in the name “ICONADA”—combining the notions of symbol (ICON) and sound or rhythm (NADA)—or in his oft-repeated principle, “culture must be rooted, creativity must accompany,”（文化有根，創意是伴） his work consistently affirms one belief: tools are extensions, but humanity remains the subject.

For this reason, he supports diverse forms of human–machine collaboration, including AI-assisted visual creation, narrative structuring, and cross-media translation. At the same time, he cautions that without deep humanistic grounding, local knowledge, and lived experience, AI-driven production risks sliding rapidly toward stylistic homogenization and emotional flattening.

Conclusion: Preserving Human Depth in the Age of AI and Creative Industries

In summary, Dr. Tan Beng Huat’s perspective on AI is neither a fascination with efficiency nor a fear of technological displacement. It represents a conscious, critical, and practice-oriented humanistic technology stance. While acknowledging the challenges AI poses to humanistic education and creative ethics, he actively leads ICONADA in exploring constructive forms of human–AI collaboration in digital storytelling, platform curation, and cultural transformation.

For professionals in the cultural–creative and AI sectors, his perspective serves as a reminder that long-term competitiveness has never rested solely on algorithms, but on the capacity to continuously generate narratives and cultural power that are rooted, affective, and deeply human amid relentless technological change.