The government-led artificial intelligence (AI) education initiative has met a key student enrollment goalpost, Deputy Minister of Education (MOE) Yeh Ping-cheng (葉丙成) said on Wednesday.
The ministry earlier this month launched the Taiwan Artificial Intelligence College Alliance (TAICA), a collective of 25 schools that offer joint programs in AI-related fields.
Yeh said in a Facebook post that 2,527 Taiwanese college students have registered for classes offered by the alliance following the end of the add-and-drop period last week, exceeding the government’s expectations.
Photo: Dado Ruvic, Reuters
TAICA offers classes on data mining and application, natural language, machine learning, financial technology and AI, he said.
Course instructors are drawn from some of the finest Taiwanese research universities, including National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University and National Cheng Kung University, Yeh said.
TAICA would provide more classes and expand the program’s academic partners to increase the nation’s output of trained AI professionals to 1,000 per year, he said.
Separately, the ministry has launched a program to teach high-school students how to utilize AI tools as part of the government’s “visionary” infrastructure development program.
National Changhua Senior High School has opened a class teaching students to use generative AI to conduct research and prepare for a debate, with an emphasis on developing the ability to critically assess information produced by algorithms, it said on Monday.
Meanwhile, Luodong Senior High School created a community of 10 students and faculty members that experiment with utilizing technology in Chinese, English, mathematics, geography and music classes, the ministry said.
One of the community’s projects is utilizing generative AI to make animated content based on the classical Chinese novel titled Dream of the Red Chamber, the ministry added.
Taiwanese teachers have created 405 lesson plans about AI, which can be found on the ministry’s Web site for educators: https://cloud.edu.tw.
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