Taiwan digital minister discusses AI, cybersecurity during U.S. visit

Taipei, Sept. 16 (CNA) Taiwan Digital Minister Lin Yi-jing (林宜敬) recently visited Washington, D.C., and met with United States officials, think tanks and major technology companies to discuss cooperation on artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, his ministry said Wednesday.

During the trip, Lin and his delegation held talks with U.S. government officials, whom the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) 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 its language, history and culture are accurately represented by increasingly widely used AI systems.

Lin said the issue was no longer merely technical because growing numbers of people were turning to AI for information and to make sense of the world.

Taiwan is developing what it calls "sovereign AI" capabilities using traditional Chinese and local data, according to MODA.

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.

Lin warned that "some authoritarian countries" were attempting to use AI to reinterpret history and influence how societies develop. He did not name China directly.

He said this made it important for Taiwan to preserve its own data, language and perspectives and ensure the perspectives of democratic countries such as Taiwan and the U.S. were "properly understood in the AI era."

Cybersecurity also featured prominently in the discussions.

MODA said Taiwan faced around 2.6 million cyberattacks per day and had recently observed hackers using AI to make attacks more efficient.

The Taiwanese delegation discussed cyber defense, threat intelligence sharing, scenario exercises, post-quantum cryptography and frontier AI with its U.S. counterparts.

The delegation also shared Taiwan's experience in responding to cyber threats, while MODA said Taiwan hopes to deepen exchanges with the U.S. on advanced AI models and technologies and explore their use in strengthening cybersecurity at government agencies and critical infrastructure.

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.