Taiwan should extend the retirement age to keep talent in the tech industry to help train younger people as well as offer more incentives to attract foreign workers, AI on Chip Taiwan Alliance chairman Nicky Lu (盧超群) said in Taipei on Tuesday.
Speaking at the launch of the office of the Chip-based Industrial Innovation Program, Lu said that artificial intelligence (AI) is both a blessing and a challenge for Taiwan.
“We are facing an era where major corporations such as Microsoft Corp are trying to change the horizontal division of labor back to vertical integration,” he said, referring to brand companies’ plans to manufacture chips themselves.
Photo: CNA
However, Taiwan is ever-ready to take on the challenges, said Lu, who is also the chairman of memorychip supplier Etron Technology Inc (鈺創科技).
“We don’t just have pure-play foundries, but also offer heterogeneous integration, chip packaging and heat dissipation technology” — a whole semiconductor manufacturing chain that cannot be easily relocated, he said.
Taiwan has come this far by finding the “tipping point” in the industry, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) pure-foundry strategy, Lu said, adding that in the AI era, Taiwan should strive to do the same.
However, a shortage of workers is a problem, which the office plans to address, Lu said.
“People live longer nowadays; the US has raised the retirement age for full benefits from 65 to 67. The Taiwanese government should also use incentives to attract people nearing 65 to stay in their positions until 70,” Lu said.
The government could also consider expanding the substitute military service to allow more young people to be trained in the tech sector, he said.
Smart deployment of AI can also raise the efficiency of the workforce, he added.
Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁), one of the speakers at the event, also addressed the workers’ issue, suggesting that the government set up a “green card” system to attract foreign workers.
Huang said he had been approached by India, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia to discuss technology transfers, and had told them that “they can send their students here for training.”
The semiconductor schools that Taiwan has been setting up in recent years can help train foreign talent and “keep half of them in Taiwan,” he added.
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