Taiwan could become an “artificial intelligence (AI) island” under the current administration, President William Lai (賴清德) said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the annual Computex Taipei exhibition, Lai said that his government would ensure a reliable power supply, build supercomputers and cultivate talent in information and communications technology to bolster developments in AI.
Lai’s push for AI development is in line with global trends, and would complement Taiwan’s strengths in the semiconductor industry. Taiwanese tech industry heavyweights also have the advantage of close cooperation with AI frontrunner Nvidia Corp, whose CEO, Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), spoke on this at Computex. Huang also donated a supercomputer to Taiwan that could help researchers accelerate the development of AI systems. While Taiwan’s own Taiwania 3 supercomputer is capable of 2.7 petaFLOPS (2.7 quadrillion floating point operations per second), Nvidia’s Taipei-1 supercomputer operates at a significantly faster 1 exaFLOPS.
Of course, AI advancements would drive Taiwan’s economy, but there are also defense implications. It is predicted that AI would feature more prominently on the battlefield in the future, as it would allow a decentralized command structure and would enable autonomous drone strikes and reconnaissance missions. Taiwan could work with countries like the US and Japan to develop AI systems for defense use, creating a regional bulwark against Chinese aggression.
There are also the implications of China’s reliance on Taiwanese chips, which has resulted in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) being hailed as one of the “sacred mountains” that protect Taiwan from attack.
The importance of Taiwan’s chips to the global economy has been raised in the US, the EU, Japan and elsewhere, and is part of the reason Taiwan has received so much global support and attention in recent years.
This fact is not lost on Lai, who said at Computex that Taiwan was fortunate to “have a technology industry in which leaders spent decades working and catapulting it into the center of the AI revolution, turning it from nothing into the supporting pillars of the world.”
Lai is not exaggerating. Taiwan has long been making chips for AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm, all of whom are big players in the field of AI.
Lai said his administration would seek to cultivate talent in information technology, and it would truly be in the government’s interest to do so. The government could facilitate this by investing in incubators and specialized programs at the top universities, and hiring researchers and professors from overseas to fill any talent gaps.
TSMC earlier this week announced it would donate NT$4 billion (US$124 million) to senior-high schools and universities to cultivate talent.
Other industry heavyweights might also be interested in public-private partnerships, which could allow more private funds to be funneled into public institutions for the purpose.
AI would be of growing importance in the years to come, and while Taiwan is already well-positioned as a leader in the hardware that powers the industry, it has ground to make up on the software side of things. If Lai lives up to his promise, Taiwan could make strides.
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