TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taiwan government said this week that it would launch its own AI-powered chatbot as an alternative to counter China's ChatYuan, which pushes Beijing's state-approved narrative.
Taiwan's version of an artificial intelligence (AI) powered ChatGPT-like chatbot is scheduled for launch by the end of 2023, said Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠), head of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), in a media briefing on Monday (Feb. 13). The chatbot will be designed to serve Mandarin speakers using traditional characters.
Taiwan began discussing developing its own chatbot in November, when San Francisco–based OpenAI released ChatGPT. An anonymous official said meetings with experts have discussed how to integrate advanced technologies in fields like big data, machine learning, and AI algorithms to give the chatbot a better feel for traditional Chinese characters.
In a report issued in late December, Taiwan ranked No. 7 in the world in terms of AI technologies and solutions.
However, relevant technologies advancement does not mean it will be easy to develop a chatbot, said several AI experts. Dr. Hsieh Chen-chiung (謝禎冏), director of Tatung University's AI Lab, said, for example, massive data licensing needed for development would be a big challenge.
Dr. Lee Hung-yi (李宏毅), electrical engineering professor at National Taiwan University, said strong machine learning has to be complimented by powerful hardware. He pointed out that Microsoft ChatGPT was built with 10,000 GPUs, but the likely developer, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NARLabs) only has around a fifth of those.
Lee added that Taiwan's chatbot can be more appealing to Mandarin speakers around the world by modeling it using solid AI research from Taiwan's top universities, in addition to the principles of freedom of speech and democracy.
