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.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not