“Only today do I know who I am”: when AI makes everything possible, why still build and why still learn?

On 21 September 2026, the Chinese EMBA programme at the National University of Singapore opened its 2026 intake. Academic Director Professor Fu Qiang delivered the opening address, titled “Only Today Do I Know Who I Am”.

The title sounds literary, but the question is hard-edged: the entrepreneurial paradox of the AI era — once AI lets anyone write code, design, write copy and analyse data, and the threshold of “capability” is flattened, why still start something? Why keep learning?

1. The speaker: an economist who has taught at NUS Business School for two decades

Professor Fu Qiang graduated from Peking University's Guanghua School of Management in 1998 and earned his PhD in economics at Indiana University. He has taught at NUS Business School since 2005 — managerial economics, macroeconomics, international finance — was named the school's best EMBA teacher, and now serves as Academic Director of the Chinese EMBA programme. Twice he has been named one of Singapore's most influential business academics under 40.

His research field is applied game theory — how situations evolve when everyone is second-guessing everyone else. That background is especially interesting in the AI era: technology has made every individual more capable, but the structure of the game between people has not changed.

2. Where the programme stands now

On 29 April 2026, QS published its 2026 global EMBA rankings: NUS's Chinese EMBA placed first in Asia and 14th worldwide, the only Chinese-language EMBA in the global top 20. The round covered 215 EMBA programmes across 55 countries and territories.

In the same year's Financial Times global EMBA ranking, the NUS EMBA placed 9th worldwide, a record high — 32nd in 2024, 23rd in 2025, 9th in 2026, a 23-place gain in two years. Across both the 2026 QS and FT tables, the programme ranks first among Chinese-language EMBAs globally.

The ranking itself is not the point. The point is something plainer: business education taught in Chinese, combining Eastern culture with an international outlook, now stands in the global first tier.

3. “Only today do I know who I am”: after capability is equalised, what is left

The weight of the sentence is not on “I” but on “only today” — it takes a great deal of experience before one finally knows who one is.

In the AI era that “only today” carries a very concrete meaning. For twenty years we have defined ourselves by what we can do — I can code, I can build a model, I can write a proposal. AI is taking those abilities away one by one. So what is left to define “me”?

Professor Fu's 2025 opening address was titled “Breaking Open the Realm Where Birds and Fish Forget Feeling, Unfolding Rivers to the Farthest Horizon: From the Myth of Goals to an Open Society”. There he said the programme takes “freedom, science and progress as its yardstick, encourages open thinking, protects a diverse ecology, insists on conveying humanity's shared values in Chinese, and strives to find the common denominator of Eastern and Western civilisations”.

Read together, the thread is clear: once tools stop being the barrier, what remains is judgement, values, and why you are doing this at all. That is probably the real weight of “only today do I know who I am” — the stronger AI gets, the harder this question is to avoid.

4. A reminder for our own work in international education

Working in international education in Singapore, the question parents ask us most often is: “Which major will not be replaced by AI?”

The question itself may be aimed slightly off. Professor Fu's address asks a different one: when AI makes everything possible, do you still want to do it, and why. The first is defence — find a job that will not disappear. The second is offence — find something worth doing. Which one a young person learns decides whether the next decade is spent waiting for instructions or setting direction.

5. For anyone considering an EMBA

• QS 2026 global EMBA: 1st in Asia, 14th worldwide (the only Chinese-language programme in the top 20)
• FT 2026 global EMBA: 9th worldwide (32nd in 2024 → 9th in 2026)
• Chinese-language EMBA: first globally on both the 2026 QS and FT tables

But more worth hearing than the numbers is the address itself. Original video: https://weixin.qq.com/sph/AuKBk80JvP (WeChat Channels links open inside WeChat only)

Source note: this piece draws on the description published with the official NUS EMBA video; facts and figures are cited from QS, the Financial Times and NUS public materials. No video footage or transcript has been reproduced.