TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — To address digital era challenges the Digital Taiwan Roundtable (台灣數位科技與政策協進會) this week elected a top artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and web security-oriented service provider for its new leadership roles.
Members of the advocacy group pushing for Taiwanese government's digital transformation convened on Wednesday (Dec. 20). Luis Ko (高志明), incumbent president of the organization and I-Mei Foods Co. CEO, and Dr. Yeh, Jer-liang (葉哲良), deputy chief of the Cabinet-level Public Construction Commission, gave speeches.
Yeh talked about modernization of the government software procurement process. He said information security should be at the forefront of any government agency’s information system and the mindset should be reflected in the procurement process.
"In the latest procurement guideline issued this September for the public sector, the budget for improving information security is required to be additionally allocated rather than as a complimentary service for each service purchase, and that shows the government is placing greater emphasis on information security," Yeh added.
At Wednesday's leadership election, Chang Pei-yung (張培鏞), founder of the country's major web security-oriented service provider, was elected to lead the organization. National Taiwan University (NTU) Professor Jane Hsu (許永真), Institute for Information Industry's CEO Cho Cheng-hong (卓政宏), and Business Today President Liang Yung-huang (梁永煌) were elected as vice presidents.
Hsu's promotion to the leadership role is thought to mark a growing interest in AI topics driven by generative AI advances. The NTU professor is currently serving as chair of the school's Computer Science and Information Engineering Department.
This plays a pivotal in shaping the country's indigenous large language models (LLM), which comply with Taiwan-specific criteria for language, culture, and history. For the past few years, Hsu has been developing the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE), which is compiling the Taiwan-specific information.
The Digital Taiwan Roundtable has steadily grown its membership and participated in a number of information security-related events. A Cabinet-level digital ministry became a reality in 2022 following the organization's years-long advocacy.
* I-Mei Foods is the parent company of Taiwan News.
