Audrey Tang: That’s good. It means that everyone has shared values now.

Audrey Tang: It’ll be a more academic setting.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Audrey Tang: Yes, of course.

Audrey Tang: It’s definitely OK.

Audrey Tang: I see.

Audrey Tang: Yes. First of all thank you so much for preparing this list. I heard about you talking about a V2X the vehicle to road communication, the vehicle to city communication. That turns out to be in the past months, the hardest subject in Taiwan, due to a railroad accident.

Audrey Tang: We’re now quite interested in deploying AI before the end of the year, actually to prevent something like the railroad accident from happening again. The traditional way to solve this would be collision detectors or just putting more New Jersey barriers [laughs] between the railroad and the road or to install push to warn systems intersections.

Audrey Tang: None of this, of course, is AI, but people are now asking the minister of transportation to deploy more advanced and, therefore, more cutting-edge solutions, for example, computer vision sensors using a Wyze camera on the railroad sections that has turns. If anything occupies the railroad, then the computer vision will see it and then warn in advance.

Audrey Tang: We’re not aware of any large-scale deployment of such technologies, but we wrote our own anyway. The ethics of this design will be a concern when we deploy it at the end of the year. There’s also conversations about even more advanced designs, like using lidar mounted at a top of a train so that it augments assists the driver in detecting opticals on the railroad.

Audrey Tang: This is just one very narrow implementation, but it’s something fresh in everyone’s mind, and it illustrates all the ethics boundaries pretty well. It’s a good, as you said, testbed of such ideas, and the infrastructure required to implement this will also be useful in other V2X scenarios. Our Board of Science and Technology is quite interested in having this kind of case study conversations.

Audrey Tang: In addition, the Data Governance Strategy Review Board will also convene here in Taiwan, to focus on data governance, about cross sectoral use of data, international flow of data, that’s always a good topic. These are the more newer topics since we last spoke. Of course, anything that pertains to remote assisted learning or health is always a good topic.

Audrey Tang: The road safety and the data governance principles became more prominent in the past months.

Audrey Tang: I understand. This is not about an engineering discussion. What I’m trying to say is that it’s easier for me to find the Taiwanese equivalent to these researchers to agree to a more regular discussion if we can maybe share relevant research that will be making a positive impact on either of our societies. You mentioned disaster resilience and recovery.

Audrey Tang: I think that that is always a good opening to whatever academic topics we’re going to explore.

Audrey Tang: Yes. I’ve been using 5G for the past year now, and it’s been very smooth. I had a low-latency call with say, the Korean counterparts, and I was at the back of the car, so they see…Because I am on the phone at the back of the car, they see the entire window in a trip with me and it was like co-presence. Quite impressed about how quickly 5G gets to play here.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Audrey Tang: Definitely. We’re seeing millimeter wave deployments for the specific areas that are, pilots test-beds for the V2X. I have not personally tried out the millimeter communication, but I heard that it’s quite a attraction to startups trying to explore the open rent space and so on.

Audrey Tang: Definitely.

Audrey Tang: It is. I also envision maybe face-to-face meetings before end of the year. I think that’s always a good icebreaker.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, because pure or video-conference conversations is good to build a knowledge and to exchange information. I always think face-to-face initial conversation is like having a compression dictionary, a mental model of one another.

Audrey Tang: It makes all the conversations after that over the Internet easier, because you can expand to more bits of knowing that there’s a mental model within our mind to the other person. It facilitates further conversations.

Audrey Tang: I’m getting a self-paid AstraZeneca first dose today, so I’ll be free to travel sometime in July.

Audrey Tang: Like Taiwan had with Palau and Singapore also offer Taiwan that, and New Zealand and Australia, between themselves and so on. It will get figured out gradually, and I understand the administration must be very busy around the Olympic Games.

Audrey Tang: My current schedule is very dynamic. If the pandemic situation is under control in August, I can visit in August. [laughs] If you open up in September, I can visit in September. October is fine too. It is all OK.

Audrey Tang: They’re our neighbors in top-level country domain. Dot TW is next to Dot TV.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. I heard Korea, one of the companies is also planning to launch 2,000 satellites in the next 10 years to build a very similar system.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, we have a lot of offshore islands, and of course our diplomatic allies in the Pacific, and from a accessibility inclusion point of view, we of course, welcome more connectivity choices in such areas that’s underserved, or real expensive, because we commit to broad as human right.

Audrey Tang: We’re very much looking forward to partner, to solve the last mile accessibility issues on the smaller island in rural areas. We’re also quite interested in being part of the supply chain, to make such technologies happen.

Audrey Tang: That’s our, official stance, of course my personal interest also, is at play here. I’m really passionate about bringing tele-house and tele-education to indigenous people and so on.

Audrey Tang: I’m also interested in the application layer stuff, enabled by these core technologies, but I believe the underlying technology is weclomed in a very positive light.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. Convergence.

Audrey Tang: Yes, I think our interoperability focus is definitely there.

Audrey Tang: Yes. They are formulating a similar kind of strategy group. They are also academics in their own right.

Audrey Tang: If you have a kind of initial contact person, either yourself, or someone leading this group, kick off conversations, that would be great.

Audrey Tang: OK. That’s excellent. I will let them know. I will also share with them, and then they will reach out via email, and set up such a call.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: Yes. Let’s find a mutually agreeable time. That will be around late May?

Audrey Tang: OK. Of course.

Audrey Tang: Excellent. We can also exchange more and what should we do, during my visits later in the year. Also earlier if the relaxation of travel starts before that, we can plan what to do, when we finally meet face-to-face.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: You too. See you next time. Bye.