The US is confident Taiwan will one day be to artificial intelligence (AI) in Asia as Wall Street is to finance in North America, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Brent Christensen said in Taipei yesterday.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Global Entrepreneurship Congress Plus convention, Christensen said Taiwan has long been known as a world-class technology manufacturing powerhouse and is now emerging as a globally recognized innovation and entrepreneurship hub.
Leading US companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Uber and Qualcomm, have established either AI research and development centers in Taiwan, or hope to in the near future, Christensen said.
Photo: courtesy of the Presidential Office
Google has also made Taiwan central to its software-hardware integration efforts, he said.
“Who can blame them? We have every confidence that Taiwan can become to AI in Asia what Wall Street has become to finance in North America,” he said.
Taiwan is also perfectly positioned to ride the Internet of Things (IoT) wave into the future, Christensen said.
The nation’s long-standing prowess in electronics manufacturing is finding new life in emerging IoT industries, including smart cities, biomedical technology, smart machinery and the manufacture of components for autonomous vehicles, he said.
“If we can combine American AI with Taiwan’s hardware expertise, we have no doubt we can be the joint architects of the AI-enabled future,” he said.
Christensen said Taiwan is an important partner of the US, especially for implementing the US’ Indo-Pacific Strategy.
“We share the goal of a free and open Indo-Pacific, one where energy, infrastructure and digital economy innovations can all be used as instruments of social good,” he said.
Organized by the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, the convention runs through today.
The theme of the event is “Enabling social impact with AI and IoT,” focusing on the use of smart-technology applications to accelerate innovation and the digital transformation of start-ups, and small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as promoting sustainable development of the global digital economy, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said.
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