Taiwan sits at a critical crossroads as authorities and technology firms push back against pressure from mainland China by leveraging their own neural networks built on large language models. The move is part of a broader effort to secure a leadership role in the rapidly expanding AI landscape, with coverage noting the strategic importance of domestic AI development.
The debate centers on how mainland Chinese AI systems respond to questions about Taiwan and its governance. For instance, Baidu’s Ernie chatbot can identify Taiwan’s presidential winner, yet it also reinforces the view that China remains a unified state, even when the AI is not directly queried about sensitive topics.
To fortify its foothold in AI, Taiwan has allocated around $555.6 million through 2026 to develop tools aimed at countering China’s growing tech influence and to participate more prominently in the global AI ecosystem.
Another major initiative is the Trusted AI Dialogue Engine, known as Taide. Its developers describe Taide as a language model designed to assist businesses, banks, hospitals, and government bodies with everyday tasks such as drafting emails and taking notes from meetings.
Taide’s licensing protocol sources content from local media and government agencies. Practically, this approach is intended to support secure processing and storage of confidential banking, medical, and government information, especially since the system will run on servers located in Taiwan. The makers assert that the model does not need to rival the power of large platforms like ChatGPT in order to be effective.
Earlier, some Chinese technology firms explored AI-scale boosts using graphical processing units popular in gaming.