National Taiwan University (NTU) established an interdisciplinary centre that combines the application of Artificial Intelligence (A)I on robotics, industrial manufacturing, biomedicine and cognitive science. NTU is a comprehensive university, which is innovative in academic fields and is a high-quality environment for research and Industry-academic Cooperation.
The centre aims not only on executing cooperative research between institutes of NTU, but also to collaborate with laboratories and related centres, like: “Imaging Center for Integrated Body, Mind and Culture Research” and “Neurobiology & Cognitive Science Centre”. They will recruit, cultivate key research talents to integrate industrial, governmental and academic resources. With the efforts, they wish to promote advanced industry-academic collaboration on research and to improve the strength of the knowledge economy of Taiwan.
The establishment of the interdisciplinary centre is essential for the development of science and technology, especially AI in Taiwan. AI has been developing over the past sixty years and has experienced two significant transformations. The first transformation made AI received attention from the industry with the knowledge drive professional system. Then, the second transformation has made larger achievements for AI with the data-driven system.
With the integration of Big Data and Machine Learning, AI has made prominent achievements in many areas. Therefore, it is urgent and important for every country to think about how they can utilise the existing high technology on improving the current situation.
Taiwan government has started the “Taiwan Productivity 4.0 Initiative” and the “Innovation Programme of Five Industry”, which includes the Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency (ASVDA), biotechnology and medical industry, green technology, smart machinery and defence industry.
The Smart Machinery Industry Programme aims at “Creating the city of smart machinery, “Deepen the development of products and techniques of smart machinery, “Accelerating on importing smart machinery into the industry” and “Promoting international connection.”
With the intelligent system of a solution built, this could help to facilitate the industrialisation of smart machinery and the modernisation of all industries. The programme has helped to determine an approach under the wave of the industrial revolution for the country. Moreover, related fields of AI and robotics are indeed not only important keys to the development of Taiwan but also two key development points for countries over the world.
With the improvement of people’s living standards, people pay more and more attention to personal health, which makes health management and disease prevention become the focus of healthcare worldwide. People not only want to receive a highly precise diagnosis, but also hope that AI could assist in the prediction of the risk on the occurrence of disease, and prevent events that would harm their health with appropriate intervention or treatment.
“Brain-like Artificial Intelligence” has been brought up in recent years; above all, the most well-known example is “Deep-Learning” and the theory of deep learning comes from the study of the optical system of the brain. Therefore, understanding the construction and function is also fundamental for the demand of AI. The researchers on the theories believe the extensiveness of application on AI and the field of medicine will achieve an unprecedented realm on diagnosis, prevention, and even treatment through AI.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, the application of AI can be seen in all fields, including the media industry with the development of a prototype AI anchor. In addition to AI anchors, AI is also used in various ways in Taiwan’s news industry, such as automated listening to help editors grasp the content and sort out the core news from a jumble of background information in no time.
With AI becoming increasingly popular, the dimension of its impact in the news industry will continue to exist. However, machines still have difficulty to completely replace human beings. Today, AI is mostly used in repetitive and routine work since there are some unique human characteristics that robots cannot emulate. Fact-check and other AI services that are available in the news fields will certainly become the norm in the near future.
