Audrey Tang: Is the sound and screen getting through?

Audrey Tang: OK, excellent.

Audrey Tang: Sure, no worries. It’s just a couple of minutes anyway.

Audrey Tang: That’s why I needed to check with you whether it’s OK to mention your name or you’re a special advisor to the cabinet because, the journalists, they all ask about that.

Audrey Tang: OK, professor.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Audrey Tang: Yes, I am aware of that. Yes.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, whether it’s internal only or also external.

Audrey Tang: That’s great. The journalists that ask me questions, they seem to focus a lot on AI ethics. As you mentioned, privacy, but also data governance safety, transparency, and so on, seems to be a hot topic.

Audrey Tang: My main idea is leadership by example. For example, I could not roll out this OpenAPI Procurement Policy without doing a API-first redesign of our own office’s website or services, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Eventually, the scope will be larger, but I term it to different interior milestones saying that, “If we cannot solve even our [laughs] cabinet-level problem, how can we tell the ministry what to do?

Audrey Tang: Before we have the central ministries digitally transform, how can we tell the municipality what to do? Before we have the service designed for the municipality, how can we tell the private sector what to do? This is all like a year, year and other year basis.

Audrey Tang: 500 internal and 100 external, I read?

Audrey Tang: Yes. Of course, given Taiwan’s situation, we sometime work through, for example, social sector, or academic channels, instead of purely on a ministerial level. For example, I’m also a board member of the Digital Future Society, the Mobile World Capital think tank basically.

Audrey Tang: It’s definitely what we are working on, as a series of bilaterals and so on. We received some information from the GPAI, also in my role in Digital Future Society.

Audrey Tang: I think this will be very helpful if we also build into what we call mini-lateral, meaning that maybe three or four or seven countries are agreeing on the basic principles, for example, ethical AI development.

Audrey Tang: If it’s value-based, like if it’s about common good, well-being, safety, privacy, then it’s like working on the fire hazard protection construction guidelines. It’s not political, and people are generally fine with that.

Audrey Tang: Yes. That’s right.

Audrey Tang: Yes, I’ve been having pineapple vinegar and seeing pineapples everywhere for the past a week or so now.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Audrey Tang: The education is one of the areas where nobody will oppose it, at least in our two countries. It is this always right topic. The digital realm, like in Taiwan, we had many experimental high schools or experimental primary schools.

Audrey Tang: My mom founded the earliest one, the primary school that works with the basic education in the indigenous area, and so on. Those remote areas, they are looking to transform their relevance using Internet-based curriculums, Internet-based teaching, and so on.

Audrey Tang: There’s also a what we call Teach for Taiwan is a non-for-profit that works closely with google.org to bring to the more rural places the kind of education that people could enjoy in the larger municipalities.

Audrey Tang: This has justified a lot of our investment in 5G or in universal broadband and in things like that, because everyone can see that if people get pretty good education in the rural areas, then it solves the over-concentration of population problem. For that people are very willing to put a lot of investment in. That’s how we justify the tele-education or similar education technologies.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Audrey Tang: Yes, these are the critical years for consideration. Yes.

Audrey Tang: That’s a good direction. It will also make it easier for the people in the, as you said, countryside and so on, all participate in the digital agency’s mission. Disaster relief is great, but a disaster don’t happen every day. School happen every day.

Audrey Tang: I know. It’s like that every month, but still, the schools involves everyone.

Audrey Tang: Have your people reached out to our team?  Maybe as you said academic collaboration setting is a good setting.

Audrey Tang: It is an advanced earthquake warning detection system because certainly those sensors will receive the earthquake, like seconds or even have a minute before it hits Taiwan, the main Taiwan island.

Audrey Tang: For earthquake early warning, it certainly is good use of public money.

Audrey Tang: Definitely. I totally agree. This part, it’s certainly a part of the digital agency’s work, like part of the 500 people plus 100? OK. Excellent.

Audrey Tang: Excellent. Our own digital agency founding act, which will be sent to the parliament ten days from now, also includes the foundational infrastructure team from the NCC. We’re looking at a very similar composition. The foundation is going to be the network and telecom policy people and the deployment person.

Audrey Tang: That’s great. If the meeting with them goes well or if I have time, I can also join if the time allows.

Audrey Tang: Yes, definitely. When we’re doing infrastructure planning, it’s also not just about Taiwan and the islands of Taiwan but also about our diplomatic commitments in the Pacific Ocean as well. There’s many diplomatic allies in the Pacific Ocean of Taiwan that has been looking for solving this connectivity issue in a more reliable way as well.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course.

Audrey Tang: Of course. Let’s do that.

Audrey Tang: The other thing, the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, the GPAI, because Japan is a founding member, I wonder if you know which office or whether it will be part of the 500 people, whether it will be part of the digital agency. That is the equivalent of our AI Office in the cabinet.

Audrey Tang: I see. This is exactly the discussion I was having with our Minister of Science and Technology.

Audrey Tang: It’s definitely just going forward without the guidelines, if we don’t have the guidelines in place. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: OK. I think it’s a great topic for our next month’s discussion, where the founding act in Taiwan’s Digital Agency will probably be presented to the parliament by then.

Audrey Tang: We could talk a little bit about how we envision the interaction on the external side, but also internally, with the science council, with the science minister. That may be interesting for you, as well.

Audrey Tang: Oh, wow. [laughs] You were also on Clubhouse, I heard?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. I used Clubhouse only during the New Year’s break, using a fresh iPod Touch as you can see here.

Audrey Tang: However in order to make it more inclusive, we ended up recommending the use of other cross-platform alternatives.

Audrey Tang: I’m defining it as “It’s my personal time thing, not a work thing.” Especially because of the same inclusion arguments we received.

Audrey Tang: I refused to use, way back from 2014, publicly to use LINE for communication. LINE, at a time, has no end-to-end encryption in group chat. I said, “Having no end-to-end encryption means that I can’t possibly prove it’s me saying this and not somebody in the middle.”

Audrey Tang: LINE in Taiwan came to me, 2016, said that they actually listened to that and implemented into an encryption to small-group chatrooms. Still I’m not using LINE for work purposes; I use instead self-hosted communication solutions.

Audrey Tang: Clubhouse has no end-to-end encryption, and don’t even have transport encryption. Maybe they will fix that in the future. This is also good opportunity to get people to know that having no transport encryption means that there’s no classified meeting, there’s no group meeting. It means that everyone listens to everything. So this serves as a pedagogical tool, I mean the Clubhouse case.

Audrey Tang: Yes, definitely looking forward to that.

Audrey Tang: I’ll send you something from our Ministry of Science and Technology about Taiwan’s AI development. Just general background, but you’ll know the people who could be interested in bringing AI discussions, then I’m happy to also introduce them to our AI-related officers.

Audrey Tang: All right, cheers. Bye-bye.