TSMC AI involvement has benefits, risks: ex-Google Taiwan director

Taipei, March 13 (CNA) Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan Managing Director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei Wednesday.

Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) -- currently among the world's 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI -- ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI.

"This is because AI is starting a revolution in information industry, which means the central processing unit (CPU) the world used to rely on for computing in computers needs an update for the new AI era, and Taiwan's chips are crucial for the production of the new graphic processing units (GPUs)," he said.

"Taiwan's PC industry also sees ample opportunities in AI servers," Chien added.

However, as TSMC's market value is almost Taiwan's annual GDP, "it is also a top risk factor -- relying on one single industry or even one single company," he said.

Chien told the audience that chips are not the "oil" of the 21st century, rather data is, an idea supported by the fact that several of the world's top 10 most valuable companies are data companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon.

In the AI era, "the real oil is data, and semiconductors are just a conduit," Chien said.

However, he found that Taiwan is not keeping pace in terms of familiarizing itself with data-based generative AI, symbolized by the use of AI-powered ChatGPT.

According to a survey conducted in 2023, "the U.S. users of the chatbot account for about 11 percent, followed by India, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines," Chien said, "while few Taiwanese utilize the interface."

He warned that "as generative AI is now best at reading and generating synopses for you, if this work has not been done for marketing or analysis in your company, you are already on the back foot."

Chien said Taiwanese society is still not learning to interact with AI, a new technological trend that is set to impact 300 million jobs worldwide, according to a Goldman Sachs report.

A Bloomberg ranking that placed Taiwan 14th out of 33 (higher than Japan and China) in terms of countries benefiting from AI was mainly based on Taiwan's ability to adapt.

Chien said this means that Taiwan has a strong manufacturing-based economy that has so far absorbed the impact of AI, which has negatively affected economies that rely more on knowledge-based jobs.

Of particular note is that Taiwan's score in "innovation" and "diffusion" are decisively lower, he added.

"It is not a tool gap but a knowledge gap if the tools are already there but people are not using them," Chien stressed.