Tech heads call for larger talent base by including retired, foreign workers

Taipei, May 7 (CNA) Taiwan should extend the retirement age to keep the talent in the tech industry and help train younger people, and should also attract more foreign workers, said Nicky Lu (盧超群), chairman of AI on Chip Taiwan Alliance (AITA), on Tuesday.

Speaking at the official office launching event for Chip-based Industrial Innovation Program, Lu said artificial intelligence (AI) is both a blessing and a challenge for Taiwan.

Lu, chairman of AITA, an alliance established in 2019 on the initiative of the government for tech companies and research institutions to interact on a monthly basis, is also chairman of Etron Technology.

"We are facing an era where major corporations such as Microsoft are trying to change horizontal division of labor back to vertical integration," he said, referring to the brand companies' plans to manufacture chips themselves.

But Taiwan has always been taking on the world with its agility and flexibility, Lu stressed.

"We don't just have the pure-play foundries, but also heterogeneous integration, chip packaging, and cooling," which make up a whole infrastructure in the semiconductor industry that cannot be easily moved away, he said.

Taiwan has so far made its advancement by finding the "tipping point" in the industry -- such as TSMC's foundry-only strategy, he said, adding that in the AI era, Taiwan should strive to do the same.

However, Lu raised the challenge of insufficient talent, which is one of the tasks to be tackled by the newly launched office.

"People live long nowadays; the United States has raised the retirement age for full benefits from 65 to 67, and the Taiwanese government should also use incentives to attract people reaching the age of 65 to stay on their positions until 70," Lu said.

He also called for allowing substitute military service to be expanded to allow more young people who do not want to undergo mandatory military service, to be trained in the tech sector.

Smart deployment of AI can also raise the efficiency of the current workforce, he added.

Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (PSMC) Chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁), one of the invited speakers at the event, also addressed the talent issue by suggesting that the government put forward a "green card" system to attract talent.

Noting that India, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia, have all come to him to discuss technology transfer, he said "they can send their students here for training."

The semiconductor schools that Taiwan has been setting up in recent years can help train the foreign talent and "keep half of them in Taiwan," Huang added.