Hou Yixiu, Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Digital Development, was recently invited to attend the "AI for Good: Challenges and Opportunities in Taiwan" seminar held in New York, USA, and delivered a keynote speech. (Provided by the Digital Development Department)
Hou Yixiu, Parliamentary Undersecretary of the Ministry of Digital Development, recently visited the United States and said that Taiwan can contribute not only chips and servers to global AI development, but also practical experience in how democratic countries promote AI popularization and security governance, and looks forward to cooperating with the United States and countries with similar ideas to jointly build a trustworthy AI ecosystem.
Hou Yixiu was invited to attend the "AI For Good: Challenges and Opportunities for Taiwan" seminar held in New York, USA on September 29 and delivered a keynote speech. The event was co-organized by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York and the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council (USTBC) during the high-level peripheral meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in 2026, and was hosted by Rupert Hammond-Chambers, President of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Association.
Hou Yixiu pointed out that "how to widely popularize AI applications" and "how to use AI safely" are two major challenges currently faced by all countries. On the one hand, Taiwan develops "sovereign AI" with strategic autonomy as the basis for expanding AI applications. On the other hand, through talent cultivation, AI can further enter different fields from the technology industry.
Take the “AI Garden” project promoted by the Ministry of Digital Development as an example, hoping to bring AI applications to rural campuses, farms, and long-term care institutions. Hou Yixiu believes that the key to creating value from AI lies in the breadth and depth of its actual use. Therefore, applications cannot only be concentrated in large technology companies or urban areas, but should also further enter small and medium-sized enterprises, farms, hospitals, schools and government agencies.
As the scope of AI usage expands, security governance has become another key. Hou Yixiu said that Taiwan hopes to establish a safe and trustworthy AI usage environment through governance mechanisms such as the "Artificial Intelligence Basic Law" and the AI Risk Classification Framework, combined with collaboration between various ministries and industries.
She pointed out that the more popular AI applications are, the higher the importance of "trust" will be, because people will only adopt technology they trust; at the same time, security will help promote wider use, and the expansion of application scale will also make security governance more valuable.
Hou Yixiu also mentioned that "AI for Good" is also the name of the United Nations' flagship AI summit. She said that Taiwan, where more than 90% of the world's advanced chips and AI servers are manufactured, has been excluded from the United Nations system due to the interpretation of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758. This is a huge loss to the establishment of a trustworthy AI supply chain and the safe development of global AI.
Han Rubo, president of the US-Taiwan Business Association, also pointed out at the meeting that "trusted" is an important common keyword. "Trust" is an important factor for international technology companies, including NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, to choose to cooperate with TSMC and Taiwan's industrial ecosystem.
In addition to talking about AI governance in New York, Hou Yixiu also traveled to the Greater Washington area to attend "The First Workshop on Sovereign AI for Collaborative and Pluralistic AI Ecosystems" and delivered a speech titled "Sovereign AI for Collaboration and Co-Creation: Taiwan's Policy Layout and AI Governance Practices."
The Department of Digital Development stated that the workshop was part of the HCOMP+CI 2026 joint conference co-organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)'s "International Symposium on Human-Machine Complementarity and Alignment" and "International Symposium on Crowd Intelligence", focusing on how to make AI systems reflect local culture and diverse values through technology and governance.
