Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-jing (林宜敬) recently visited Washington and met with US officials, think tanks and major technology companies to discuss cooperation on artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, his ministry said yesterday.
During the trip, Lin and his delegation held talks with US government officials, who the Ministry of Digital Affairs did not identify, and several Washington-based think tanks, including the Hudson Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
One of the main issues discussed was "how AI models understand Taiwan," as the government seeks to ensure the country’s language, history and culture are accurately represented by AI systems.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Digital Affairs via CNA
The issue is no longer merely a technical one, because growing numbers of people are turning to AI for information and to make sense of the world, Lin said.
Taiwan is developing what it calls "sovereign AI" capabilities using traditional Chinese and local data, the ministry said.
Sovereign AI broadly refers to efforts by countries to gain greater control over the infrastructure, data and expertise underpinning their AI systems.
The government is also evaluating how international AI models handle Taiwan-related issues and sharing the results with developers to help improve their models, the ministry said.
"Some authoritarian countries" are attempting to use AI to reinterpret history and influence how societies develop, Lin said.
That makes it important for Taiwan to preserve its own data, language and perspectives, and ensure the perspectives of democratic countries such as Taiwan and the US are "properly understood in the AI era," he said.
Cybersecurity also featured prominently in the discussions.
Taiwan faces about 2.6 million cyberattacks per day and had recently observed hackers using AI to make attacks more efficient, the ministry said.
The Taiwanese delegation discussed cyberdefense, threat intelligence sharing, scenario exercises, post-quantum cryptography and frontier AI with its US counterparts.
They also shared Taiwan's experience in responding to cyberthreats.
Taiwan hopes to deepen exchanges with the US on advanced AI models and technologies, and explore their use in reinforcing cybersecurity at government agencies and critical infrastructure, the ministry said.
During talks with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, the delegation discussed using advanced AI for threat analysis, vulnerability detection and incident response.
Discussions with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, covered scam prevention, AI-generated content and platform governance, including ways to improve age and identity verification while protecting user privacy.
The delegation also held talks with Amazon on satellite communications and the development of related services in Taiwan. Amazon operates Amazon Leo, a low-Earth orbit satellite network.
A total of 400 foreign “high- level” professionals have been naturalized as Republic of China (Taiwan) citizens over the past decade as the government has eased nationality rules to attract talent from a wider range of fields, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The 400th high-level professional, who works in the electronics industry, was approved for ROC citizenship on Aug. 26, the MOI said. The MOI quoted the newly naturalized citizen as saying that Taiwan is a leader in fields such as semiconductors, electronics manufacturing, artificial intelligence development and energy technology. He also said
China has warned that it could cancel a planned US-China leaders’ summit if Washington approves new arms sales to Taiwan, a Japanese media outlet quoted sources as saying yesterday. US President Donald Trump, “apparently eager to showcase some diplomatic achievements ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections, places great importance on holding the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Japan’s Kyodo News reported. “While preparing for Xi’s upcoming trip, China has restated its position that the Taiwan issue is a ‘red line’ in bilateral relations,” the report said. The report said that when Xi met with Trump in Beijing in May, Xi said
RARE PEEK: The footage released showed one of the bears staying in a cave for as long as 70 days, providing the first record of Formosan black bear’s overwintering The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released tracking records of released Formosan black bears for the first time, showing that they get much closer to human settlements than previously thought. The agency said it had captured two bears, Da Qu-ali (達古阿里) and Aziman (阿里曼), in indigenous villages in Hualien County and began to track them with a camera-mounted satellite collar after releasing them back into the wild. The results confirmed that the bears have moved from deep mountain areas into lowland hills closer to human communities, leading to an increase in human-bear conflicts, it said. The agency has introduced artificial intelligence-assisted early
DIPLOMATIC TOUR: Chinese President Xi Jinping began a series of overseas visits last month to Kyrgyzstan, Egypt and India, aimed at securing leverage, an official said Recent Chinese diplomatic and military moves are aimed at creating pressure ahead of a planned meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump, National Security Council adviser Huang Chung-yen (黃重諺) said. Trump when visiting China in May extended an invitation to Xi to visit Washington on Sept. 24. China is yet to officially announce plans for Xi’s visit to the US. In an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) on Thursday, Huang said Xi’s overseas visits, China’s “gray zone” activities along the First Island Chain and efforts to expand its trade surplus with the
RSS