Taiwan should step up its efforts to enact an artificial intelligence (AI) law to facilitate the adoption of the technology as rapid advancement in AI technology and the popularity of generative AI have raised serious concerns about misinformation, fake news and intellectual property infringements.
Taiwan is lagging major countries in offering legal guidance for using AI technology, although most discussions are still in the infancy stage. The government has been hesitant to regulate AI. In 2019, several lawmakers pushed for the creation of an AI law by proposing several drafts.
The government planned to roll out its own draft AI act by the end of last year. However, this did not happen, given the complexity and greater-than-expected challenges in finding a balance between enhancing development of technology and improving people’s lives, while avoiding unintended consequences.
Last week, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) disclosed some clues. By the end of October, a draft AI basic law would be put forward to the Cabinet, the council said. Encouraging technology innovation would be one of the principles in making the law. Besides, it would be human-oriented, NSTC Minister Wu Cheng-wen (吳誠文) told reporters. No further details were disclosed.
Compared with the government’s snail pace in providing a legislative basis for AI regulation, generative AI’s training and inferencing has doubled or tripled since it burst onto the scene in late 2022 amid an AI technology dominance race among the world’s technology giants including Nvidia Corp, AMD, Alphabet and OpenAI.
With the pace of technology advancement, people can easily access AI applications on their mobile phones, making AI their personal assistant by voice or text. Moreover, a wide range of industries, from medical care, transportation, banking, manufacturing to retail, have adopted AI technologies.
However, that also means that people are exposed to higher risks, as can be seen with surges in disinformation, scams and intellectual property infringements.
Some people are trying to prevent their voices and faces from being used in AI deepfakes after a slew of cases in which the voices of political leaders, actresses and singers were faked.
To minimize such risks, EU countries are to implement the world’s first AI act next month after the 27 countries of the economic bloc endorsed a deal last year. The rules aim to protect fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability from high-risk AI, while boosting innovation, the EU said.
Compared with the EU’s comprehensive measures and mechanism, the NSTC has said that it intends to make AI rules a basic law by putting forward only guidelines for privacy protection, risk management and ethical principles.
With ample flexibility in regulating the adoption of AI, it would only benefit the technology’s development, but people’s rights can hardly be safeguarded.
To strike a balance, the government should work on more approaches to protect human rights and strengthen risk management, with an aim to block or reduce automated cyberattacks, AI-powered phishing attacks and deepfake scams. Intellectual property protection should also be considered.
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