Audrey Tang: Shall we proceed?

Atsushi OSANAI: That’s okay. 今天非常高興妳百忙之中抽出時間，So thank you so much, your Excellency. We have some students from Wasabi University. So they are part time MBA students. They are a business person that they even have a work in the daytime. So we study MBA related classes in the evening. Today, so all of us read your book in Japanese, we have some question about innovation, diversity, and democracy. So we’d like to ask some questions.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Atsushi OSANAI: We’d like to discuss in just a moment. Thank you so much.

Audrey Tang: Of course, sure.

Audrey Tang: So, as I understand, it’s all being documented, right?

Audrey Tang: There’s going to be a video… The video is probably going to be parsed by a multimodal AI into a transcript. And so please feel free to just ask away, in any language. I believe we have translators here too? Yes, okay.

Ryuhei YOSHIDA: OK, so awesome. Can I start? Thank you for your time today.

Ryuhei YOSHIDA: And as he already said that we all studied the innovation in the current administration and we already read your books. We each have different interesting parts. Like I’m interested in communication and other is like AI or so we ask each we prepare each question from our, so let me start. I’m studying in the necessary communication skills of the business industry. And especially I’m curious about the person who crossed the organization. Not multiple organizations, not only my company, but also other companies or also university or many organizations. And then I read your book.

Ryuhei YOSHIDA: From your elementary school age, you made some communication with the university student or professors and you are also as a minister, you are also I think you are good at the face to face communication. So that’s the face to face communication and online communication is a very different skill set. What is the main importance of the difference between that two communications? That’s my interest.

Audrey Tang: Okay, just to clarify understanding. So you’re asking being good at online communication doesn’t necessarily translate to face to face and vice versa. And you’re asking what’s the main difference and also commonalities between these two modes. In face to face communication, we can always check whether we are in the same context, right? So if I use a word that you don’t quite understand, you can just say, oh, I want to clarify the use of this word just as I just ask you a clarifying question, right?

Audrey Tang: But online, it’s not always so easy. If it’s online and asynchronous — meaning you post on Twitter and I reply on Twitter — then it’s not the norm to go back and check with you what each word meant. Normally, people just interpret it however they want, which leads to what we call a context collapse, that the intended audience and the audience that actually reply to it is different. So the reply person carries their own context with it.

Audrey Tang: So it’s double misunderstanding, right? Both the first person, the first poster wouldn’t know where the reply is coming from, and the replier didn’t quite know what each word means.

Audrey Tang: And if both sides are good at recontextualization, meaning treating all the mistakes, all the offending parts, and so on as opportunities to clarify and support each other, then of course we can get back to an ideal face-to-face scenario. But online it takes far more time to do that compared to simply misunderstanding each other, which leads to polarization and so on. So online requires extra care to first look for potential misunderstandings and second to reestablish the context. And I call it troll hugging. This is something that I practice every day.

Ryuhei YOSHIDA: You also think that the kind of skill for the online communication has been changed this 20 years. In your childhood, we didn’t have any Zoom or Teams, but in this era, we have Zoom to make online communication. But in the future, it could be done in other ways, like with AI or mixed AI, or with future communication styles. Do you think, what’s the next skill do we need for future?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, online is moving more and more to what we call co-presence. Like feeling each other’s attention just as we are feeling now in a face to face way. There are many AR advancements. For example, Nvidia just posted a machine learning model that lets you look at a screen but then you’re not looking at the camera anymore, but then it deepfakes your eyes so it looks like you’re still looking at a camera. The two sides maintain eye contact but you don’t have to actually look at a camera. [laughter]

Audrey Tang: And so there’s more and more small advancements in augmented reality or like Skype or Microsoft teams has a together mode so that it’s like we are all looking into a large mirror of us sitting side by side and so on. So there are many online designs that are trying to anticipate the need for copresence and approximate copresence. And once the approximation is I guess good enough, then it will lead to the same synchronous attention that we talk about in the face to face setting. Thank you.

Genri INAGAKI: May I ask one question?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Genri INAGAKI: So actually my question is what is the best area to collaborate in the AI and human? The reason why now I’m working for the medical company, medical device companies. Especially I’m in charge of the developing the future in the business strategy. And then I’m very interested in which area is best in the area to collaborate between the AI and human.

Audrey Tang: Do you mean best as in… what do you mean by best?

Genri INAGAKI: Best means like how to harmonize what to make a more better something. Okay, collaborate with the AI and the Human.

Audrey Tang: Okay. So to me it’s easy for around 20 people in the same room to spend a day enjoying food together and so on, building a mental model of each other, become good friends and then start creating something. But if it’s 200 people, very difficult. 2000 people, not possible, right? So there is a wetware restriction in our brain that prevents us from doing this synchronous communication with more than, say, 150 people at the same time the most number. But AI doesn’t have that problem, right? It can very easily do kind of cultural translation that translates one person’s context into the other person’s context. Of course, this can be used for good and for evil. For evil is scam or confidence game right, very bad use. Deep faking someone’s voice and so on. But for good, it enables a person who, for example, speak like, I don’t speak Nihongo, for example, fluently, but it would enable me to carry my intonation my intention and so on in a way that a native Japanese speaker would understand without them having to learn English. Right. So this is what I call assistive intelligence. So, in a sense…. I was in Germany for a year when I was ten.

Audrey Tang: So back when I was in Taiwan, I consider myself quite proficient in writing and speaking in Mandarin. But once I move to Germany, it’s as if I become illiterate, I become handicapped. I don’t even know what the signs say on the street. And then assistive technology means to restore my balance with the social context at that point. So there’s a lot of especially for elderly people care from Japan, a lot of use of AI to assist the elderly people so that they can still be a fully participating member of the society. So this reintegration of handicapped people, and it’s not a part of the population, it’s everyone, right? Once I move to Germany, I become a handicapped person. So each of us can be handicapped and AI can help humans to reestablish the kind of mutual support rapport that we have in this room, despite the space and time and culture and language variance.

Genri INAGAKI: I see, I see. Thank you so much. Let me just confirm, the AI is a kind of perfect tool to integrate in the handicap people. 10:37 it’s one of the advantages.

Audrey Tang: Yes. But this is not to make us like, superhuman dominating one another. This is just to remove the handicap that prevents communication from happening and from co creation from happening and then co-creation from happening.

Genri INAGAKI: Thank you so much.

Rinshin YOSHIDA: 我會講一點中文，我用中文問問題。我家在日本做語言學校，對中國人教日語的學校，所以等於教外語。現在 ChatGPT 這個技術出來了，你剛才講翻譯的技術提高了，這樣的情況是我的工作會不會沒有，因為自己不學外語，AI 也可以翻譯，在這樣的情況下，人還會有理由去學外語嗎？您怎麼看？

Audrey Tang: 我最近在台灣有一本訪問我的書，99 個私抽屜，這個是先在日本出版，日本的名字叫做「一無所有的空間裡充滿價值」之類的，在那裡面我提到的概念是只要有標準答案的，AI 就會做掉了，所以剩下來人類可以做的都是沒有標準答案的事情，沒有標準答案事情的意思是，每個人按照他的生命經驗不同，能夠貢獻不同的部分，所以像是我剛剛舉的例子，像是翻譯的部分就沒有了，但跟你做好朋友的部分都還在，協助你融入當地的社群，介紹你給當地的社群認識，因為 AI 沒有自己的生命經驗，是做不到的。

Audrey Tang: 因為台灣有一個概念叫做「雙語環境」，2030 年大家都要很友善來使用外國語，不管這個外國語是英語或者日語也好，現在也有一種講法是，其實重點是在理解到彼此的文化，可以教這樣的朋友，並不是掌握這樣的語言，因為語言的話，翻譯器都可以做到了。所以我覺得文化的翻譯裡面，靠近機器或者是字典的這邊就教給 AI，但靠近人的這邊，還是要人來做。

Ayumi ISHIZUK: 我可以再加一個問題嗎？像是人可以做的部分，如果特意要去定義只有人可以做的東西，應該會是什麼樣？比如感情方面，或者比較講不出來的文化？

Audrey Tang: 你定義的很好。簡單來講就是書寫技術出現之前的，都是只有人可以做的，自從有書寫技術出現之後，有一些事情就自動化了，這個是書寫系統發明的自然結果。很像漢字或者其他語言，因為書寫系統的發明，就是那個人已經不在的時候，或者無論如何把他想講的話留下來一些，所以他本來就是設計成一個沒有人在的時候的一種技術，可以說語言模型等等的技術是書寫技術最大化，但是在書寫技術發明以前的人也是有文明的，並不是沒有文明的，那個時候對大家重要的事情是什麼，現在就更重要。

Atsushi OSANAI: This conversation is about the relationship between the AI or IT and so human beings. Our science work at Toshiba, the new Toshiba CEO said, so he told that these two decades Japanese are getting weak in the economics industry however so they want to catch up the AI or IT technology however, we don’t think we can catch up only in the IT area, so Shimada-san CEO of Toshiba said so manufacturing is a good point of Japanese industry. So he mentioned that the relationship between the hardware and the AI or software or something. So how do you think about the relationship between the hardware and AI or IT. So what is the role of manufacturing of hardware in the digital era?

Audrey Tang: So, to check my understanding, what you’re saying is that if someone or some industry is very good at manufacturing, what’s the relevance of this comparative advantage in the era of machine learning and AI.

Atsushi OSANAI: Okay, utilizing IT or AI technology into the manufacturing world, hardware, business. This is Japanese uniqueness. I have the same opinion. We are good at creating new products as a hardware. So how to realize something better products so utilize AI or IT some kind of advantage. It’s a new role of hardware manufacturing. How do you think about this?

Audrey Tang: Yeah manufacturing is a very large field, so I cannot say with certainty that it will affect all the different sort of things that manufacturing does. But it seems to me that a lot of manufacturing is moving towards a more like subscription or use based instead of possession based so, for example, the newer generation’s relationship with cars and shoes or whatever is different from the strictly possession relationship. So there are a lot more emphasis on not just personalization of style and fashion, but also personalization in terms of how it fits into the lifestyle of the person. So in a sense, the manufacturer is just the beginning of the design. It’s a more humble approach, whereas the people, the community, the people who actually use it get to participate more in the design process. So it used to take a lot of customer polling or things like that in order to get into your next cycle of manufacturing, because mass manufacturing means that you have to settle on one or two of different product lines. But more and more we’re looking at people who feedback their actual interactions with the products, so that what they actually want is the service, and the product is just in service of the service.

Audrey Tang: So I think AI will accelerate this trend more accurately to reflect the actual desire and actual demand of your users of the service, so that the products can shape more quickly to respond in the service of the service, instead of just selling the same as product. And then service just means maintenance. So I think the order of service and product will more easily be reversed once the customers have a reliable way to collect their preferences and feedback to the manufacturer.

Atsushi OSANAI: Thank you so much.

Atsushi OSANAI: Do you have any other questions?

Hajime IZAWA: Can I go back to AI?

Audrey Tang: Yes, of course.

Hajime IZAWA: So recently, like Rinshin-san said, ChatGPT is very popular and so we, maybe younger age are not sure what should we do for the future? I mean, what will be required for the business person in the future? So maybe we have to learn about AI. What is AI, what AI can do or cannot do something. So if you have any suggestion or maybe any idea. Do you have?

Audrey Tang: Ok, so the question is, what would a business person do in the future? Essentially, that’s the question? Yeah, it’s interesting because previously, like, if you work in product management, in customer success and so on, your role is to take the service requirements of your customers, translate it so that your product team, your research team, can understand and so they can make better products. But now this intermediation layer is almost gone. Your customer can simply describe what they are not satisfied with the product. Tell ChatGPT and say, give me the CNC code or whatever 3D printing code or things like that, or a website code. And then voilà it just makes it itself. And if that person requires more expert machinery, they can just rent part of the time of the expensive machinery. So that person become a prosumer without getting any training whatsoever in that particular professional field. All they need to do is to articulate what they don’t like about the product. This is what I mean in my previous answer. So I think a business person, in a sense is democratized means that everybody can be a business person now. It’s just like handheld phones and cameras, like this democratized media.

Audrey Tang: It used to be only professional camera person can carry those camera, and only broadcast media have the spectrum required to broadcast news. But now everybody can live stream and news work become entirely democratized. So very soon, I guess, starting a business, running a business both online and face to face is going to be a democratized skill. So that anyone can, if they want, set up a business.

Hajime IZAWA: So a business person should be curious about technology or AI, maybe. So I myself am not so curious guy. But everybody’s talking about ChatGPT, AI something. Just now I studied about AI…

Audrey Tang: But there’s no need to fear of missing out. It’s called FOMO, right? Like if you learn nothing about NFT or Web3 the entire last year, you missed nothing. [laughter]

Audrey Tang: Now if you actually want to use public blockchain for Notarization, or for digital art and so on, actually, it’s easier to learn now compared to the Hype cycle last year. And the reason why is that digital technology, unlike say, literature or law, you don’t have to learn what has happened before in order to learn what is available now. Actually, that’s sometimes a drawback, because it will limit your imagination. You will be trapped into what was possible before, whereas everything is possible now with the current generation of technology, with its own limitation, of course. So the point I’m making is that you can get into Web3 or AI or whatever at your own leisure. There’s no need to memorize everyday development. If you feel comfortable with one bit of it, you just learn it as it is here and now. There’s no need to accumulate trendy knowledge and so on. That’s my main message.

Hajime IZAWA: Yes, as I heard that the AI can gather the information in all of the world and then they put some information in that like ChatGPT. But we tried ChatGPT, we asked ChatGPT about Osanai-san, but sometimes they made mistake. They still. so I think that our business person main goal is that to decide what to choose in the main…

Audrey Tang: Exercise your human judgment. That is important. Well, if you ask the Bing version of GPT-4, it probably will not always get it wrong, because whenever it doesn’t feel confident, it just go to do a search online, right? So if what’s online about your sensei is accurate, it would just say that. If it’s not accurate, at least it will provide a citation.

Audrey Tang: So I think the Hallucination problem is very real, but I expect it to be mostly solved in a few years. But what it cannot replace, as you said, is human judgment, human curiosity, human relationships, anything that exists between two human beings, that is not replaceable. So I think this is sometimes called relational capital or whatever. But that is important.

Genri INAGAKI: Actually, that is a kind of one risk in the digital AI. I think, for instance, fake news, that is a big risk. And then in the people, we have to have a good skill to verify, to judge which is a fact which is fake. That is my understanding. And in Japan, there are many fake news now, actually. But in Taiwan how about in Taiwan there are many fake news? If so, how to control that?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, in Taiwan, I think people have a healthy amount of critical thinking. Like all major news outlets are assumed to be, I’m sorry to say that, but colored in one way or another, so that you will have to look at some other journalistic work in order to balance it. And so it’s like, I don’t know, being exposed in a diverse environment for a long time. And people have antibody already in their mind. So unlike in Japan, which I understand, more legitimate journalistic news outlets is automatically assumed to be authoritative because they do their fact checking very carefully, very seriously. So if it’s printed on paper on the largest newspapers, it’s assumed to be real.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, I would say there’s a healthy amount of skepticism, no matter which large newspaper print in large papers fonts. So I think that’s the main difference. So I guess there’s good and bad, right? In this model, the good is that it’s more adaptive, people exercise more critical thinking. The bad is that it could progress to such a way where there’s no easy way for actual fact to spread to all corner of the society. And people are believing in their own context, their own angle of the society.

Audrey Tang: So I’m not saying the Taiwanese situation is somehow better. I’m just describing a difference.

Ayumi ISHIZUK: May I?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Ayumi ISHIZUK: My question has a big different color from the previous one. My question is, do you think digital technologies have side effects such as resistance from those who are suspicious for new technologies? The reason why I came up with this question is because recently Japanese government has been promoting ID card. My number yes, my number is similar to 身分證 in Taiwan, but it is not going so well because some people feel it is likely to be monitored or like tracked. So my question is how we can implement this technology smoothly without those kind of concerns or what kind of effort can we make. Since I’m half Taiwanese and I literally feel the difference between Taiwan and Japan. So I’m very curious.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s a great question. So technology doesn’t appear in a vacuum. It’s always compared to what goes before it. Right. So in Taiwan, when we introduced, for example, the universal health care system, it was recorded on this paper card with six slots in it. When I was a child, that was the health card. But then the numbering system was already unique ID per person. So when we introduced the equivalent to the Japanese My number, the universal health ID card, around 2003, 2004, I think people generally see it as more secure and more private compared to the paper one, because the paper one, obviously everybody can see which prescriptions you received the previous time, your previous visit and so on. Whereas in the IC card, only an accredited doctor or nurse or clinician, along with their institution’s card, so there’s three cards together can write into the IC card. And then if there’s any information that you feel that is incorrect, there is a redress mechanism. You can go back online to check who, where did this wrong prescription, and so on. And so, because there’s a mutually accountable system, people know if things go wrong, they can see where and who caused this difficulty.

Audrey Tang: And so that helps to build trust. So I think so, two points here. One, compared to the previous paper based or other digital solution, it needs to be safer and also more convenient in order to get adoption. It’s not good enough to be safe but inconvenient, or convenient, but unsafe. It has to be better on both counts, first thing. And the second is that there’s always a need for people who feel like this could be better or this has done me wrong, to make concrete suggestions that can get into the next iteration in an anticipated time, like a couple of months or so. Without such feedback and improvement mechanism, it’s very easy for people to feel that if I’m excluded now, I’m excluded forever. And that will cause resentment.

Ayumi ISHIZUK: Thank you very much. For the second, let me confirm my understanding. Because of those combinations, people can know where they are now and then, what is going now, what is happening now and then, it enables every procedures, right? Is it what you mean?

Audrey Tang: You mean with the health card?

Ayumi ISHIZUK: Yes. The second point, yeah.

Audrey Tang: So the second point is, if you open 健保快易通, the National Health Insurance Express app, it lists everything that the national healthcare has about your card, right? And there’s also a QR code, a virtual card, so you can also use your phone as a card now. And then, because it’s mutually accountable, you can see what’s happening. And if it goes wrong, you can always talk to someone that this is wrong, I’m being wronged by the system, and so on. So always a way of feedback, of redress and so on is important. Even the app itself, the QR code, that’s the virtual card is collaboratively designed with stakeholders in an interactive workshop. So I think that’s the universal healthcare’s main advantage is that it doesn’t leak out of the scope just because some ministers said, let’s add a payment system to it, or whatever. It doesn’t happen. Right? It needs to get widespread stakeholder consensus. And when we run the workshop a few years ago, the consensus is that they don’t want this card to be also a payment system because they don’t want to be tracked by merchants and so on. And because this is the collective will of the stakeholders, when we implement that, it also increase trust.

Ayumi ISHIZUK: Thank you very much. Well, I think it is very important to let people to experience that kind of whole experience so that they can understand how convenient and how safe it is. And then hopefully they wouldn’t have that kind of restriction. And that’s what I thought.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. If they try it and it’s called Red teaming, right. Actually find problems with it, then of course we need to be humble enough to say that our design was wrong and let the person who brought this point be our designer. Right. Just invite that person in.

Ayumi ISHIZUK: Thank you very much. Thank you.

Rinshin YOSHIDA: 你剛剛提到以後更重要的能力是要解決沒有答案的問題，我想問的是，現在基本上高中的教育跟大學的教育都是教有答案的內容。

Audrey Tang: 還好我沒有上過高中，沒有感覺過。（笑）

Rinshin YOSHIDA: 我是有這樣的印象，就是對沒有答案的問題解決能力每個人都不同，怎麼樣的能力最重要，怎麼樣訓練學校或者大學該做怎麼樣的教育比較好，在下一步？

Audrey Tang: 沒有答案的問題，不靠一個人自己解決，所有有標準答案問題都是練習題，像是大家提到很多 AI 來了，製造業如何轉型，到處都是 Deepfake，我們要怎麼辦等等，這些都沒有標準答案，所以工作跟生活上碰到的問題，本來沒有標準答案才是常態，有標準答案都是在學校裡面模擬出來的，很像一種電動遊戲，像是俄羅斯方塊是有標準答案的，就是按鍵按得多快跟轉魔術方塊的標準答案，你出了遊戲就沒有太大的意思，我覺得最重要的是大家好奇心，要自發找出一些你覺得有意思的事情之外，還有兩個很重要的，第一個問題問到的是，如何跟不同背景、不同時區的人，從面對面到線上的各種方法來互動，這種聽清楚對方意思的能力，把自己的脈絡完整呈現給對方能力，這個當然 AI 可以幫忙，但沒有辦法取代的，因為 AI 沒有你內部、主觀、互動的狀態，這個是可以練習的，最簡單就是聽人家說話、不要打斷別人聽話的能力，這個非常容易練習。

Audrey Tang: 第三個，去創造出共同價值的能力，因為每個人在意的事情都不一樣，有的時候一下吵起來就是因為乍看之下他要的跟你要的是衝突的，有限的資源只能給你或者給他，然後就吵起來了。但是也有創造新價值的能力，原來我們各要這個都是為了某個更重要的價值，我們只是採取這條路或者那條路而已，但是你找得到這個共同價值的話，看起來安全跟方便也不衝突等等，所以把看起來衝突但找到共同點這個能力也是非常重要。

Ryuhei YOSHIDA: Yeah, for the third point, I totally agree. But it’s like common sense, right? It is, but it’s really hard to do.

Audrey Tang: Have common sense [laughter] to make common sense.

Ryuhei YOSHIDA: In Japan the government is trying. We are a democratic country, right? Yes, we are democratic country and we try hard to keep that. But sometimes the Japanese border is old people because Japan is a very old country, not like our ages. Main age is like 50 or 60. So sometimes the government, the choice is for the elderly people so that’s our. Sorry it’s politics but that’s the difficulty when I live in Japan.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, there is an inherent problem with modern democracy is that if the voting age is 18 years old, then by default all the policies take care of the interest of people who are above 18 years old. It’s by design, right? And that’s why many democratic countries nevertheless pass laws that, for example pollute the environment, but not in a very quick way, in a way that will be felt only by the next generation. But the next generation is too young to vote or haven’t been born yet and so they cannot veto these bad decisions that make sense for the next ten years but makes no sense for the next 100 years. This is an inherent problem with democracy. This is true, right? So I think there are many ways to go around this issue. One way is to represent this long term interests with for example, there’s an idea called natural personhood in which a river like the Ganges River in India or the Whanganui River in New Zealand who are very long lived have a vote as a natural person. So that is one design. Another design is to make sure that people younger than 18 have significant agenda set in power when it comes to democracy.

Audrey Tang: So although they are too young to vote on people, maybe they’re not too young to vote on petitions or participatory budgeting or anything like that. So in our ministry, we run many hackathons and we don’t put an age restriction on who can participate. As long as you can participate online or have an email or have an SMS number and so on, it could be that your parents gave you this SMS number, that is fine, but you can still participate fully in this online form of democracy. And so it makes the younger people, when they are 18 already ready for democracy instead of spending like ten years of their life from eight to 18 feeling helpless. And it’s always the old people doing old people things, giving all the benefits to the older people and if you spend ten years in that state you become disillusioned with the democratic system very easily. So empowering people who are younger than 18 as well as people in the future through some sort of representation is both important.

Kaneki YAMAGUCHI: Thank you very much for having the opportunity and I’m the daytime student and before coming to Waseda, I have been working at a printing wiring board company and EMS company and many times I visited the Taiwan company and sometimes I painfully think that why there is a big difference between the Japanese and the Taiwanese growth. So my thesis of university is that try to seeking the difference between Taiwan and Japanese company and especially focus the PCB industry. Actually, two days later, I will visit the TPCA Taiwan Printing Association and three weeks later I again visit Taiwan and go to the ITRI. It’s a very good opportunity for me. So I have two questions.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Kaneki YAMAGUCHI: One is that to seeking the difference between Taiwan and Japanese company? I think I have to learn Taiwan’s history. So some Professor comment to me the history of the Taiwan University, National Taiwan University Professor Wang Yao Shu. And I was very impressed at the Taiwanese history and one question is that, in your book, there is a mention about before the martial law and after Martial law, maybe catch up about the free… I think before the Martial law, generation free is how to say, liberty. They have to fighting and getting the liberty. But after Martial law generation, it’s like a freedom. Yes by nature they have a freedom.

Audrey Tang: Yes, I agree with you.

Kaneki YAMAGUCHI: So after martial law generation, how to say… Taiwanese companies, is like a change or state front because almost management generation is of course before martial law, I think there is a difference of thinking well. So how do you think about the future Taiwanese company?

Audrey Tang: That’s a great question and you say you had two, so that’s the first one.

Kaneki YAMAGUCHI: It is just a simple question to seeking my thesis such a study way is good or if you have a recommendation. Please advise me.

Audrey Tang: Yeah our administration for digital industries, the administrator, the director general 呂正華 used to be the head of the Industrial Development Bureau so he is very well versed and well connected in the manufacturing businesses. So while I’m not directly connected to the manufacturing industries, I can ask the ADI, the administration for some recommendations after this meeting. Okay, and then, to your first question. Yeah I’m the last generation that remembers the martial law because it was lifted around 1987 when I was six years old. I was old enough to remember the martial law but people younger than me don’t remember the martial law anymore. I agree with your main point. During the martial law, there is a strong sense that everything is a struggle. You need to struggle to get freedom of association, freedom of press, freedom of voting and things like that. On the other hand, though, because our democratization was not violent, it is gradual. So there was a ten years or so in which the martial law is lifted, 87, but there’s not yet a direct presidential election which is 96. So within that decade, it’s also the IBM PC, personal computer, everything also appear in that decade.

Audrey Tang: So during that decade, many people started organizing politically but they cannot run for president, right. They cannot run for meaningful national elections. So they tried local associations or they focused on environmental work or labor right movement or consumer right movement and so on. So the NGOs and NPOs that defined that decade later on would of course become very important sources for political change once we actually get to vote for our president. But the main legitimacy is in the civil society. So the Taiwanese entrepreneurs around that time put a strong emphasis on cultivating relations. Nowadays we’ll say CSR or ESG or things like that. But back then maybe it’s just community relationships become very important for Taiwanese people because that’s when people start to politically organize and there was no meaningful opposition party anyway during that time until later DPP became more powerful, right? So during that decade, when we say a company tries to be good to the community, it’s also that the company is trying to organize some lobbying power politically, which is very different from the martial law way, which works very differently. It’s a kind of privileged system. Right? [laughter] So to your point, I think Taiwanese still nowadays judge a company in more like how much good it does to the community even more than whether it’s profit.

Audrey Tang: So we still have very rich, wealthy people who capture a lot of economic value from the ecosystem, but because they are not loud about it or they are loud, but only about the charities that they do. So there’s less of a social division. So if you look at our income division, compare that to the jurisdictions with similar income divisions, you don’t see as much opposition, tension between different income groups. And I think that is mostly because the social capital, the relational capital, the community capital that the companies put even and sometimes even especially manufacturing community enterprises to the community. So that is, I think, what bridges together the older martial law generation and the younger freedom generation together. It’s this common good and in many other jurisdictions it would be a violent revolution between the two generations and would be very harmful, I guess, for everyone’s memory traumatic right to think about that. But because we’re thoroughly nonviolent, we’re bound together by that decade of communal work.

Atsushi OSANAI: Thank you so much your excellency. We have to today I often told you when we talk about innovation so I told you the importance of the diversity. So I have also the diversity management class. Diversity is equal with democracy because people can say the different opinion to others. So it is based on the freedom, liberty and democracy. So professor Valerie of Harvard said dynamic productivity. So sometimes losing diversity organization have efficiency but they lose the effectiveness. So such kind of organization cannot make a new innovation. So today we discuss about the relationship between the digital and innovation. I think the digital technology is a tool for realizing such kind of diversity and democracy. We’d like to continuously discuss about such kind of relationship. So after discussing with some minister Audrey Tang, so thank you so much.

Audrey Tang: Very very good questions. Thank you.

Atsushi OSANAI: Would you like to take a photo?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course.

Atsushi OSANAI: And before taking a photo, I ask my favor. It is very my personal thing. I have a YouTube channel. So if possible, please watch my YouTube because I’d like to expand my knowledge of innovation and management.

Audrey Tang: Excellent. What’s the name of the YouTube channel?

Atsushi OSANAI: 「長内の部屋」。

Atsushi OSANAI: 謝謝，謝謝你。

Audrey Tang: You are welcome.

Audrey Tang: So where are we taking a picture? Here or outside? In the lobby. Okay. Yeah, you don’t have to bring your things. You can just take a picture first.

Atsushi OSANAI: Thank you so much.