A presentation yesterday on Taiwan’s self-built language model TAIDE, released commercially on April 15, showed the many fields it can be applied to, from language learning and agricultural knowledge searches to banking customer service.
The project to develop TAIDE, which stands for Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine, was initiated by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in April last year to create a foundational model for a traditional Chinese generative AI dialogue engine specifically for Taiwan.
The NSTC has collaborated with several institutions on the project over the past year, and a number of them appeared at yesterday’s presentation in Taipei to promote the system and demonstrate some of its applications.
Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
For example, a team from the University of Tainan, led by computer science and information engineering professor Lee Chang-shing (李建興), developed a Taiwanese Hokkien-English AI chatbot for elementary and junior-high students based on TAIDE to learn the languages.
National Chung Hsing University has created an agricultural knowledge search engine called “Divine Farmer TAIDE” that can answer professional agricultural questions with citations, said Fan Yao-chung (范耀中), an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the university.
He said the answers generated through “Divine Farmer TAIDE” are more “context-based and detailed” than an engine the team previously developed based on ChatGPT because the new model includes reports from the Ministry of Agriculture in its database.
Taiwan Business Bank, in collaboration with an AI company, has applied TAIDE to help the bank’s employees access internal financial product information — which can be complicated and is continuously being updated — to help them provide better customer service.
The TAIDE model is “grounded in Taiwanese culture, incorporating unique elements such as Taiwanese language, values, and customs, enabling generative AI to understand and respond to the needs of local users,” the council said.
A TAIDE model based on Meta’s Llama 2 (Large Language Model Meta AI) model (TAIDE-LX-7B) was released for commercial use on April 15, and another version for research only (TAIDE-LX-13B) has also been released.
NSTC minister Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠) said the TAIDE LX-7B has been downloaded more than 6,000 times in the half month since it was released, showing that there is demand for a traditional Chinese-based foundational model with a contextual understanding of Taiwan.
Announcing that the project would be extended for another year, Wu compared TAIDE to a car engine, adding that it would be up to different fields to use the model to “make their own cars.”
However, Lee Yuh-jye (李育杰), a research fellow at the Research Center for Information Technology Innovation and a TAIDE project convener, said that TAIDE is not aimed at competing with other major engines.
Llama 3 is trained by 24,000 Nvidia’s H100 GPU (graphics processing unit, which has become the backbone of artificial training training), while Mixtral, another large language model, has 1,500, and “we only have 72.”
“What we have to do is to play smart,” not big, Lee said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated
Myanmar has turned down an offer of assistance from Taiwanese search-and-rescue teams after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the nation on Friday last week, saying other international aid is sufficient, the National Fire Agency said yesterday. More than 1,700 have been killed and 3,400 injured in the quake that struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock. Worldwide, 13 international search-and-rescue teams have been deployed, with another 13 teams mobilizing, the agency said. Taiwan’s search-and-rescue teams were on standby, but have since been told to stand down, as
RSS