Taiwan is an important beneficiary of the global AI wave. From TSMC’s advanced processes to servers, cooling, power supply, network communications and electronics manufacturing, Taiwanese companies can be seen everywhere in the global AI infrastructure. Taiwan can manufacture the world's most advanced AI chips and servers, but what is more worth thinking about is: does our ability to manufacture AI advance our ability to use AI?
We may be one of the societies in the world that is best at making AI devices, but we are not yet the best at working with AI.
The 2025 "Taiwan Internet Report" shows that the usage rate of generative AI is 43.19%, and the paid subscription rate is only 8.54%; the MIC survey also found that 46% of netizens have used generative AI, but only 9% have used it more than once a day. Another survey in 2026 showed that the number of people paying for at least one AI tool has increased to 18%.
This shows that it is not that no one in Taiwan is using AI, but that there is still a lot of room for growth from "having used AI" to "intensive use of AI".
Occasionally asking ChatGPT to translate, check information, and write articles is using AI; further AI capabilities allow AI to organize data, analyze documents, create presentations, write programs, plan work, and even use AI agents to connect different tools to complete a series of tasks.
Only by actually using it can you truly understand AI.
You can’t learn to swim by just reading swimming theory, and you can’t learn to drive by just reading the instructions. The same goes for AI. Only by continuous actual use will you know what it can and cannot do, what can be believed and what must be verified.
And AI is moving from "answering questions" to "performing tasks." In the past, we asked: "How to do this?" In the future, we may directly tell AI: "Get this done." The important ability in the future is the ability to set goals, judge results, and even direct multiple AI agents to work.
This is especially important for Taiwan, which has a declining birthrate. The working population will continue to shrink in the future. If per capita productivity does not increase simultaneously, economic growth and public services will be under greater pressure. The value of AI is to help a person complete tasks that required more manpower in the past, and to amplify everyone's abilities.
Therefore, what Taiwan needs is not just an AI industrial policy, but a "National AI Productivity Project." Schools allow students to use AI to solve problems, governments allow civil servants to use AI to improve efficiency, companies allow various departments to actually introduce it, and small and medium-sized enterprises and the general public should also lower the threshold for use.
The real digital gap in the future is no longer just whether you have a computer or whether you can access the Internet, but:
Will you let AI work for you?
Taiwan cannot just be a manufacturing powerhouse of AI servers, but must also become a powerhouse in the use of AI.
Because AI does not “understand” but “uses and understands”.
