 It's very interesting that we face on Taiwan, is it now like one of the top-of-the-world organizations that we live in, really is very interesting. I found out, like, back-to-back ideas and relationships. Can you explain a bit more about ideas in front of us? Yeah. So, Symbox is a simple idea that within an area like one of Taiwan's three main islands, like the Arctic Island, the Green Island, and so on, people can try out new innovations like telemedicine, where a local nurse, a local clinic, can nevertheless diagnose and perform specialized doctorate processes to supervise by a doctor named Taiwan Island, mediated by telecommunication. And so, this is usually the case with law. But some innovators think, oh, this is actually a really good solution to the problem of the lack of specialized doctors in their remote places. So, they apply for testing for three months up to a year. So, say, after three months they test this model, and the minister has a wealth there, who participates as a co-governor, making sure that they are not putting their patients' life at risk. So, after three months, people think, oh, it's actually a better idea. So, we can go back and change the law and regulations to make sure that this innovation becomes the new norm in the regulations. So, for a limited time, in a limited space, just show everybody that it is a good idea or a bad idea. That's the idea sometimes. So, the Sandbox project from, like, you want to empower us more, actually, in terms of what you call... But it's the social innovators, the people who innovate with participation from the society, who solve their social problems. And for this part, the common problem was a new issue. Yes. So, from the very start, the common problem was usually around medical or around transportation. These are the three main things. Because medical practitioners and transport practitioners need a license to operate. But once you are a licensed operator, your incentive to innovate very strongly kind of diminished a little bit. And if a new thing comes up, trying to construct this, they will face a lot of pushback from the original licensed operators. So, it helps to have a smaller testing place for everybody to see if you can produce this innovation. It's not only good for the society, but also good for the consistent established players that they can work time and time with the startups. And without this kind of small testing pilot site, people would just be pushing each other. Oh, so it's like, you know, put everyone and work together instead of disrupting each other. Right, exactly. Because many laws and regulations didn't anticipate self-driving vehicles. Because these weren't around when the laws were written. When the laws were written, people didn't anticipate that now you can use telecommunication to do surgery. So the lawyers at the time, the lawmakers did not think something like that would happen. So of course they did not write in provisions to regulate that. But once these emerging technologies happen, like these who turn out a very good example, instead of just challenging the law to change for the entire country, maybe for the good, maybe not for the good, it will be for the lawmakers and regulators that did not have any personal experience. So they are forced to make changes without any experience of this new thing. Because that makes them criminals. They want to try this. So we had this inbox where after three months, after a year or two years, that's all the law makers, all the regulators, and their constituents had the chance to try those self-driving vehicles, those emerging technologies, then we can calculate what people feel like, whether it's a good idea or not. It's a bad idea. We think that in that sense they pay the tuition for everybody, we order and something. But if it's a good idea, then we can change the regulation in a way that reflects the social law. You don't need to change the whole law. Exactly. You just change the part that people have already put in the three months or a year or so that is a good idea, a good angle for the society. Is there any doubt when you first find out if you have this idea? Yes, of course. There's fear, there's uncertainty, there's doubt. And the good thing about sandbox is that we don't have to let those fear, uncertainty, and doubt stop the experiment. We can turn those into the questions that an experiment is required to answer. So it's just like any research, except it's taking place in a social sense. Well, it's open data. It's an open data. Everybody needs to dispose. The privacy protection plan, the consumer rights protection plan, and so on and so forth in their operation. So even if they fail, they fail publicly, so everybody can live from it. Give me one good example that is coming out of the sandbox. Well, I talked about telemedicine already. So now in all the 100-type remote islands as well as the indigenous nations, they all are now equipped with the hot layer and the communication facility for the local nurses to connect to the large hospital's doctors and become a team and do biacons with them together. And this has massively increased the trust of local people to their local clinic. Otherwise they always think we need to summon a helicopter to take my family to a large hospital to get the best treatment. But now the best treatment can come to them instead of flying the patients to their larger hospitals. I think this is a really good innovation and it has been wrote out to all the 105 places because in Taiwan, broadband is a human right anywhere in Taiwan. You're guaranteed to have 10 megabits per second. It could be on the top of the huge amount. In the south most places in the United Europe, all guarantee you have broadband access. You were saying that, like I saw in the article, that this is the best treatment for the people who come up with like an innovation or a nursing idea because a lot of people want to sponsor people, has a training for it. They were scared, they were thinking as new resources. Do you think this is like the way that I'm encouraged to be in order to encourage people to be better? Yes, I think the main idea here is open innovation. So here are after the telemedicine, also some counselors, therapists, who work with people to improve their psychological health, not their physical health, also want to provide their counseling over the internet. And so they also started a sandbox experiment, trying to see whether it makes sense for the people who maybe are depressed, who maybe they are anxious, they don't want to step out of their house. And still, I think counseling really helps them. But if they cannot walk out into the clinic to meet with their therapist, their condition cannot be improved from the first stage. So if they have already built some trust with a clinic, for example, if they are not doing very well, then maybe they can still use telecommunication to talk to their therapist, and the therapist can still charge them exactly as if they have worked based on things. And currently there is no regulation for this practitioner. So again, as we speak, a new experiment in the sandbox is going on to show what is the minimum requirement, like the cell must work really well, or the skin must be very clear, or things like that for a deer to really have it. And so once we determine that, and the privacy protection, the fiduciary duty, who can do it here, so what? Or this after the sandbox crew will have a much more clear idea, and then we can change the regulation. So the government instead of saying, we're inviating the fight between the innovation on one side and social justice on the other, we can have these two kinds of people work together in a sandbox and figure out something that they have common values with, even though that they have different positions, and then the government can work out common values with. So innovation has to be given by money or like, you know, high profits, but it should serve the purpose of the society and money value of people. Right, if you see long-term profits, usually it aligns really well with the social and environmental analysis. But if you see only one-quarter profit, then those disruptions may earn some money on the next quarter, but it costs the social backlash and the social sanction will happen because in Taiwan there's very frequent social sanctions. Once that happens, then the business goes out of business. And so trying to earn quick money doesn't align with the social and environmental benefit. What the sandbox is going to do is to have everybody have one deer so that your return on profits takes place after this one deer of trying out business society. But in return, we're giving you a big sanction. Everybody else is still illegal. You're the only one who can legally operate. So you have the first mover advantage for one deer or so. So if it works well and the legislation wants to make a law, they can continue making the law, but your business is still operating and everybody else is still illegal. So this is also a profit motive for the innovators to participate in the sandbox because they have a limited time monopoly. But in your return, they must participate over innovation if they fail to fail to participate. You're also focusing on the way into this. Why is that? In Taiwan, what we're witnessing is that we have a lot of very good fields for wind power. And the renewable energy in Taiwan is important because people care about the product footprint and people care about the air quality. And a lot of these innovations start with people just being more conscious of their contribution to the energy use. So there's also a lot of people who just choose the light students who don't cause air pollution because they're new and cheap, but also that can participate and respond to stations that will immediately become a kind of energy store so that on the peak hours when the renewable energy are not yet caught up on the demand, it can free up energy from those energy stations. And under down hours, then it can recharge from the surplus energy generated by wind power. What about the renewable energy? The renewable energy is one example. Yes, they are an energy grid-delivery company, but there are also many indigenous tribes also working for their own energy sustainability so that when typhoons or earthquakes come, they are still energy-sufficient. They don't have to commit to the main grid. They can still support their communication and their livelihood, even if they're cut from the main electricity grid, and so self-sufficiency resilience and as you mentioned, Kokoro, the environmental responsibility, I think these are the driving reasons why a lot of families, young adults, just participate in their energy work. And Kokoro was one of the time bombs in the future? Kokoro is legal, so they don't say that anymore. But they were not part of the... Were they part of the process? No, no, because Kokoro started manufacturing these computers that already passed the nuclear civilization. So they don't mean that they're bombs. They're just a commercial participant. But they said that they're a business with a social purpose because they want to reduce pollution and they want to increase energy efficiency and resilience. In terms of Kokoro, how your role in the government is supported? Yes, I think Kokoro, what they mainly mean to you, is a promise or a guarantee for the government that renewable energy and pollution-free transport will actually be enforced is the general direction. If we're saying that, oh, we're heating those official cars and motorcycles opening fuel indefinitely, then of course it's a long signal to the society. So we have to start on our side. So we start by saying our core processes are home-official cars and things like that, which are nowadays as somewhat hybrid cars as we found in the piece. We say that we must gradually shift all the cars that are supported by the taxpayer money into electric vehicles and eventually self-driving vehicles. So when this happens, this sends a signal to the society that where Kokoro is going is where Taiwan is going. And so that really helps to align to your marketing and your sales campaigns. What are the challenges to take Taiwan into a real, physical world and some of them are free and smart so far? Because from the beginning, you have to come to an agreement or you have to come to an agreement and we are going to the next revolution. What are the challenges? Yeah, I think the main challenge now is that whether AI is seen as an assisted intelligence where every student-children can work with... Not a thing. Not what? Not a thing. Not a thing? Not a thing. Not as a thing. Right. It will be a place to... It will see you as a right person. That's right, that's right, yes. So I think the main point here is now AI is democratized. Like everybody who learns how to work with AI, if we would make AI that assists our daily life, then that is a good scenario. But if AI is over-concentrated into just a few suppliers that people can no longer change, then that is the bad outcome. I will use one example. In many Taiwanese who remain who were growing up in the 80s and the 90s, Taiwan is seen as the main place for personal confusedness. And personally, it means that we can change however we want. So if I want to install Lotus 123 to work on my spreadsheet, I can do so. But if I want to play games all day, I can also do so. Personal confusion means that whatever runs on the computer can be chosen and be changed by the user themselves. They are empowered. But if there is no personal confusion, what people had before personal confusion was terminals. So they are just screaming at people. But all the programs, they cannot install new programs. These are all managed by the main frame, by the large computer. So it was not called cloud at that point. It's centralized. It's centralized. So citizen development, I think that is the main thing that is driven Taiwan's AI. For many Taiwanese primary schools, they have in their environment class an AI data gathering device for the air box that just measures the air quality around the school and send it into a descriptive legend or a blockchain that teaches their children what it doesn't mean to be a data steward. What does it mean to take care of your data, to contribute your data? What does it mean to form a data collaborative? And it's all in the social center. And the government is not imposing anything on those air boxes. Instead, we're supporting them. When they say we have more than 2,000 measurement stations, we're rolling more than 10,000. But we want some in the industrial part. But the industrial parts are private properties. So the two children can up go and install air boxes out there. But it turns out the government owns the land so we just put their air box design and put those detectors on the industrial part. And so the government complements the social sector's work. And the social sector is led by teachers and researchers. And in this shape, the data governance that AI has trained from this shape is governed by the citizen along with the business and the government. So people won't feel excited by a certain reason. The innovation would work and serve the people. It is only a democracy. Exactly. I think the idea is a democratic governance where the innovation is not just for the people, but with the people. With the people is the most important part. When they talk about AI being applied, this means like this. I mean everybody can have a say in the governance of AI systems just like the internet. Anyone with an email can participate in the governance of the internet through the internet society through the internet governance forum. You don't have to be elected representative. Anyone can write a proposal to a working group and join the internet governance. So it is being democratic but it is not voting. It is a participatory democracy. So without the transparency and democracy are you going to have to do that? Well, you can facilitate social innovation. So even if the government is not being voted in still the government can use participatory budget can use petitioning or sandbox system as another very good example. So it doesn't quite matter whether the ministers are appointed as I am or they are elected like in the parliamentary systems as long as the minister can say people can have ideas if they don't work I can take some risks if they work. I am invested in support but not control specific innovations as long as the ministers have this kind of promise we can facilitate the social innovation and this is not the same as voting as democratic to see by voting. Why did you see this example of what kind of ideas are we going to have to rely on what Taiwan is doing? Yeah, so many people started voting in Taiwan and found that we have a lot of innovations but we didn't meant to do most of it. So in our sandboxes actually it starts from in the UK and then Singapore adopted it for the future. Because Singapore is very strong in finance and they regularly know that we have to have first-hand experience as the finance service wells to develop regulation technology so the intact sandbox is first started in Singapore and we followed about a year after Singapore that the only change is that we made a general promise is also self-driving vehicle is also telemedicine is everything it's not just of intact and so the main difference from Singapore is that you can challenge in Taiwan but other than money laundering and funding parents and those two are you don't have to try this but aside from those two everything else is there so it's much more broad than Singapore because Singapore is already doing very well as the UK is doing well on the intact sandbox and the education system that I mentioned we learned from Iceland from the recovery they have a system for better recovery that allows citizen to submit proposals and they are also running really well and it was started by a party called the best party and so that party initiated with this citizen initiative and we just adapted the idea into the Taiwan education system and we also learned a lot from Madrid and also from Barcelona when after the 15M movement they also started participating in budgeting efforts using the internet to get people as well as of course there is a very large network of cities almost that what is the most thing that is so possible to overcome doing all this? I think it's the people's determination if people expand the government is American then none of the sandbox will work because the people will be waiting for the government to decide just like if nobody is American the best education system has nothing to do with it so the most difficult thing for me is that the government must trust the people to have people propose ideas there are some ideas in the beginning like change Taiwan's time zone to plus 9 that sounds fantastic and not in a good way like a fantasy but if you ask very closely people will petition for changing the time zone to plus 9 and another 8,000 people to propose that we stay in plus 8 you find they have come on lines that they want to be seen more unique in the world it's just one choice at time zone as a solution and after we divide both sides like 16,000 people in total all their people are invited to join the face to face meeting and the face to face meeting we said oh this is maybe not the best idea because it will actually not make Taiwan more unique in the world because you don't have to adjust the watches all the watches are also adjusted so people wouldn't even be aware of it so even the same budget maybe we can do something more and so people start brainstorming and say yes really using this budget we should spread the word that Taiwan has the best hospitality for people who want to live here we have the best idea of huge freedom and human life innovations and so on whether they petition for this or that that these are better than time zone change to make Taiwan seen as unique in the world as everybody here they have won after this kind of petition so we have to first trust the people with these very strange ideas to still invite them in and have their real conversation with the public sense Taiwan in the next 5 or 6 years how is Taiwan alive? so in the 10 years of course we will achieve the sustainability of the remote zones which is for different reasons and that makes a transition for an accessible nation towards sustainability whereas before the public organizations are under the administrative funding for the environmental organizations are for the EPA and the sustainability council and the pro-social changes the charities and social enterprise and so on were largely under the minister of the interior and so on nowadays we are building a platform for the social innovation Taiwan that connects all the communities together so that we can discover the common points these 3 different groups of people this is called the triple bottom line if we do anything we want to have a positive impact to the economy, to the society and to the environment so this re-aligning of the goals around the sustainable goals I think is the main thing that will happen in Taiwan and we are really already seeing a lot of fruit in this bi-sectoral combination many of the problems that cannot be solved by a bi-sector alone can be solved actually with coordinated action by all the pre-sectors who are the shared sustainable goals I think if you can look at the presidential hackathon many of the cases that want of this kind of hackathon are the result of this kind of cross sector so technology cannot be extorted from society that's right that's right that's why I call AI Assisted Intelligence as an assistant as an assistant are intelligence it is not changing the society to fit the role of the technologies as technologies myself my work is to listen to the people develop technology that make people listen to each other better and once we have some common ideas some common understanding then we can start innovations because those innovations can be solved by just our solutions without identifying the problems we end up with more problems we also have ideas