Two representatives from the private sector who quit the government’s Tax Reform Committee in 2008 have been included in a new 16-member task force on taxation and finance, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Chien Hsi-chieh (簡錫堦) of the Anti-Poverty Alliance and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋) of the Alliance for Fair Tax Reform were members of the third Tax Reform Committee that operated from June 2008 to December 2009, but they quit in protest against the committee’s pro-business policies.
This time, they are joining the task force to focus on the wealth gap and fair taxation issues.
The ministry will present a full list of the task force’s members to the legislature’s Finance Committee on Thursday next week. The group will hold its first meeting in the last week of this month, the ministry said in a statement.
The other 14 members of the task force include six government officials and eight academics.
Minister of Finance Christina Liu (劉憶如) will be the convener of the task force. Other government officials include Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥), Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) and National Science Council Minister Cyrus Chu (朱敬一).
Ho Chih-chin (何志欽), who served in the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as finance minister, will also join the task force.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said that its research institute has launched its first advanced artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) using traditional Chinese, with technology assistance from Nvidia Corp. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said the LLM, FoxBrain, is expected to improve its data analysis capabilities for smart manufacturing, and electric vehicle and smart city development. An LLM is a type of AI trained on vast amounts of text data and uses deep learning techniques, particularly neural networks, to process and generate language. They are essential for building and improving AI-powered servers. Nvidia provided assistance
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