 Good local time, everyone. It is my honor to virtually participate in the Global Emerging Technology Summit hosted by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. Technology has greatly improved our lives, made the unimaginable into possible and brought numerous innovations to our society. Five years ago, there was no such title as Digital Minister in Taiwan. In many parts of the world, there was no such thing as a virtual summit. But today, despite the disruption of the pandemic, as Taiwan's Digital Minister, I can be here virtually to share how its experience on digital democracy with you. Now, some people might find it hard to link digital and democracy together. As democracy is a concept from ancient Greece, but digital sounds much more modern. But actually, democracy itself is a social technology. And just like any other technology, it gets better when more people endeavor to improve it. Emerging technologies can and should play a crucial role in advancing democracy by promoting openness and transparency, encouraging civic participation and building consensus. Just a few weeks ago, I was asked by a reporter to differentiate between digital democracy and digital authoritarianism. My answer was that in Taiwan, digital democracy means that transparency is making the state transparent to the citizens. However, in digital authoritarianism, the word transparency well means making citizens transparent to the state. The foundation of such transparency is mutual trust. When a digital authoritarian regime uses digital tools, such as state censorship to monitor its people, we in Taiwan, the social sector, actively creates digital public infrastructures to enable everyday citizens to propose and express opinions on effective policy reforms. And that is because we understand to give no trust is to get no trust. So digital democracy in Taiwan always begin with the government trusting the people. I will give you some examples. We cannot talk about digital democracy in Taiwan without first mentioning the sunflower movement. Back in 2014, there were half a million people on the street and many more online in a demonstration against the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement. For the first time in history, Taiwan's parliament was occupied by its citizens. And when I found rumors and non-factual information inevitably grew in an enclosed environment, I contributed by helping to set up a system of communication that was open and transparent to ensure that the truth of what was happening inside the parliament spread faster than rumors. By broadcasting the real situation, people can understand what's really happening and get unfiltered information enabling the liberation on the street and online. So I would say the sunflower movement is a demonstration, not just a protest, but a demo, which successfully demonstrated how openness and transparency can help get into a set of rough consensus or what I call good enough consensus. It also showed that transparency is crucial in the fight against this information and social technologies play an important role in enhancing this mutual trust. And given our geopolitical history, Taiwan is no stranger to some of the most unrelenting disinformation campaigns in the world with an intention to disrupt our civic and government processes. But what is really remarkable is that instead of using any top-down, shutdown, lockdown, information initiatives, Taiwan did none of those but employ decentralized human-centered approaches. In a pandemic, for example, we adopted what I called a fast, fair and fun approach and a humor over rumor tactic to combat against the infodemic, which allows the public to laugh at nonfactual information. And together with the efforts from professional fact-checkers in the social public and private sectors, now we have a way of assisted collective intelligence that makes the scientific knowledge spread faster, having a higher basic transmission rate than conspiracy theories. Another example is how they open internet community help us proactively tackle the COVID-19 outbreak at the beginning of the pandemic in January 2020. A great example is a face mask availability apps. It's a collaboration initiated by a social entrepreneur working with G0V or Gav0, a group of civic technologists. To prevent a panic buying of face masks, we instituted a national rationing scheme and anticipating that the policy alone would be insufficient to avoid local runs on pharmacies. We released the application programming interface or API that provided real-time location-specific data to the public on mask availability, eventually enabling the creations of hundreds of different mask-related apps. And the most recent 192 to SMS-based contact tracing check-in system was another brilliant example of such partnerships conceived in the social sector, amplified by the public sector and then implemented in the private sector. These systems were rolled out extremely quickly, basically within three days, which would not be possible without existing robust partnerships between the people, the public and the private sectors. In fact, I would say instead of eroding democracy, in Taiwan, the pandemic response accelerates democracy and deepened collaboration across sectors. And we call this the Taiwan model showing the world that we don't need to sacrifice our values to fight against the pandemic. I'm also very glad to hear that in the recent paper for the European University Institute, researching how 17 countries from Asia and Europe balance healthy resilience and human rights during the pandemic, Taiwan performed the best among those countries examined. Based on the metrics, including economic culture and social rights, civil and political rights, equality and non-discrimination and also rule of law. It's also worth mentioning that in our digital democracy, public dialogue and collaboration are vital. And our digital public infrastructure is conceived to be as inclusive as possible. So even those who are too young to vote, nevertheless have a way to start a social movement. On the online petition platform, for example, join the GOV.tw, anyone can file a petition. As long as it gathers 5,000 joining signatures, it will go into a face-to-face collaboration meeting. Across all related ministries, we have the possibility to eventually decide on regulation together. And this is how we make sure that any citizen, no matter how young they are, can help set the policy agenda and play a role in the national decision-making process. More than one quarter of citizens' initiatives were started by people who are not even 18 years old. For example, the nationwide petition to gradually ban plastic straws was raised successfully by a 16-year-old girl. Now, Taiwan's strengths in assistive collective intelligence are fostered in this transparent, open and human-centered environment. We do have huge amounts of high-quality data, world-class semiconductor industry, and smart manufacturing, abundant experience in preventing disinformation, strong computing power, and advanced networking infrastructure. In fact, broadband connection is considered a human right in Taiwan for a few years now. Most important of all, we have excellent STEM talents and experts across different domains and follow the democratic model of data governance. And our government also collaborates with the private sector to build towards an AI-enabled future. In order to promote digital transformation and industrial innovation, we actively promote our DigiPlus program, DIGI, encompassing the four pillars of digitization, innovation, governance, and inclusion. And based on these pillars, in order to transform Taiwan into a critical force in the global economy, we're also going to take advantage of the opportunities before us in the six core strategic industries, including information and digital industries, cybersecurity industry, biotech and medical technology, green energy and renewable energy industries, and strategic stockpile industries. And these efforts show that Taiwan has not only the determination, but also the capability to be a reliable partner with the United States and the international community of democracies regarding AI strategies for the sake of our prosperity, our security, and welfare. To conclude, the point of digital democracy does not only mean the use of such tools, for example, social media, online petitioning, and electronic voting. It is to reflect the will of the people and making sure democracy should be the prerequisite for the digital services that all the governments offer from development to deployment. So in other words, our digital services must be citizen-oriented. It should consider practical conditions, opens the door, and invite the public to contribute on the first day of design. And therefore, our digital services can evolve from the old model of for the people to with the people and even after the people. Finally, let me share with you my own joke description that I wrote five years ago when I joined the cabinet as digital minister. It goes like this. When we see the internet of things, let's make it an internet of beings. When we see virtual reality, let's make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let's make it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let's make it about human experience. And whenever we hear the singularity is near, let us always remember the plurality is here. Thank you all. Live long and prosper.