To fundamentally nurture AI talents to meet enterprises’ needs , the AI New Generation Talent Training (AIGO) Program at Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) promoted the General and Vocational High School Student AI Foundation Series to coalesce the government, industry, academic, and research resources. IDB partnered with six domestic and foreign companies, Amazon Web Services(AWS), Google, Microsoft, Asus, MediaTek, and Foxconn Education Foundation, as well as MOE’s (Ministry of Education) emerging technology cognitive program to help Taiwanese high school students develop AI knowledge in advance.

After four months of three-stage screening, 140 outstanding students were selected from 2,941 students, and a training ceremony was held at HNBK International Convention Center on August 26th to commend outstanding students and showcase their practical results. The closing event was attended by Office of Science and Technology’s Executive Secretary, Zse-Hong Tsai , MOEA’s (Ministry of Economic Affairs) Chief Secretary, Yi-Ling Chen, IDB Chief Secretary, Pei-Li Chen , MOE K-12 Education Administration Senior Executive Officer, Wan-Qi Lin , and representatives from partner enterprises to participate. The student works demonstrated Taiwanese young generation’s innovative creativity and enthusiasm in learning new technologies, and the program contributed to establishing teenage AI talent cultivation.

This learning series included many hands-on exercises such as unmanned vehicles, edge and image recognition, machine vision, and handwriting recognition. Students designed projects in groups to show creative thinking, teamwork, and the ability in applying AI. They used what they had learned to build and train AI modules with SBCs/EVBs (single board computers/evaluation boards) and Raspberry Pi cars to complete the creative AI object recognition applications in real life such as “Smart Traffic Lights”, “AI Cucumber Recognition”, and “Friendly Environment Garbage Classification”.

The development of Taiwan’s AI industry had become prosperous through assistance from all sectors, government, industry, academia, and research. This series allowed general and vocational high school students to broaden their international horizons in technologies and establish basic AI knowledge through activities. With the cultivation mechanism and collective efforts from enterprises, this activity series had successfully laid the foundation for Taiwan’s future AI talents.