Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon

The disruptive force of generative AI is causing a paradigm shift across various sectors. To strengthen Taiwan’s generative AI power and broaden generative AI applications, DIGITIMES organized the AI Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon.

Many teams comprising students from high schools and universities as well as people working in various industries joined the competition. On the day of the final contest, experts from Amazon Web Services (AWS) shared their insights into generative AI technology trends. A panel discussion with industry leaders, government representatives, scholars, and researchers focusing on generative AI talent incubation was held to shed light on generative AI development trends and job opportunities.

The AI Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon attracted 61 teams comprising students from 29 high schools and universities as well as people working in various industries. After one month of training, the teams came up with generative AI solutions demonstrating both creativity and usability.

The competition was divided into a hackathon division and an idea exchange division. The teams in the hackathon division worked on problems related to their business specialty and developed solutions in the AWS environment using their own business data. Participants in the idea exchange division could form their own teams and use AWS PartyRock, a no-code service, to focus efforts on developing creative ideas for generative AI applications.

AWS experts looked into generative AI technology trends

In a series of talks on generative AI technology trends, AWS experts pointed out that the ability to create, produce, provide insight, and enable innovative experiences are the core values of generative AI. The technology can generate whole-new content and ideas while boosting business productivity and can enhance customer and employee experiences through never-before-seen human-machine interactions. For example, using AWS AI/ML services, Amazon Pharmacy built an LLM-based chatbot that helps customer service agents answer questions more effectively and a price estimate tool that optimizes the user experience.

Generative AI and machine learning advances are not possible without the support of high-performance computing and storage infrastructure. In their talks, AWS experts introduced AWS solutions from the perspectives of storage and computation.

For storage, the integration of Amazon FSx for Lustre with Amazon S3 data lakes supports fast random data access and high throughput, significantly boosting training efficiency and reducing costs. For computation, AWS provides cost-effective AWS Graviton processors as well as AWS Inferentia and AWS Trainium accelerators purpose-built for deep learning and inference. On top of that, AWS also offers new services and tools such as Amazon S3 Connector for PyTorch to bring performance and cost benefits to an even higher level.

Generative AI solutions require the support of powerful data structures. AI models are commonly developed through ways such as in-context learning, model fine-tuning, and building from scratch. AWS provides a slew of database and storage services to enable high-efficiency data management and search, wherein data pipelines and data lakes play a vital role.

Generative AI applications rely on high-efficiency data management and search to operate without a hitch. AWS techniques and tools take generative AI performance and scalability to the next level, helping companies rapidly deploy and run generative AI applications, raise data management efficiency, and reap greater AI benefits.

Harnessing the power of AWS to build end-to-end data strategies, companies can strengthen their ability to analyze and gain insights into their business. According to AWS experts, Amazon OpenSearch Service can perform highly efficient searches and analyses with significantly optimized relevancy and precision.

The vector engine of OpenSearch searches billions of vector embeddings in just milliseconds. It is suitable for applications including recommendation engines, image recognition, and fraud detection. A

WS also has data integration services that allow users to effortlessly synchronize data from Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon S3 to OpenSearch. Data management is not only much easier but also more efficient and precise. With the powerful data analytic capability and generative AI technology enabled by AWS, corporations can build comprehensive data strategies and implement data-driven innovations, thereby enjoying the prosperity they bring.

Leaders from the industry and academia communicate with the AI generation about international talent incubation

In the panel discussion on generative AI talent incubation, leaders from the industry and academia engaged in conversations with today’s AI generation. The moderator, Dr. Ju-Chuan Wu, CEO of Cloud Innovation School, Feng Chia University, noted that it is almost impossible for humans to live without technology in the ICT era. Cloud Innovation School of Feng Chia University was founded to actively increase the breadth and depth of cloud applications as well as the effects and benefits of talent incubation through continuing industry-government-academia collaborations.

With regards to human resource demand, Allen Chen, VP of Platform and New Product Development, 104 Corporation, commented that AI talent is in extreme shortage in Taiwan. Only one out of five AI job openings get filled with a suitable candidate. AI professionals enjoy promising career growth.

Chen noted AI is already everywhere and people who use AI should get familiar with all types of devices to transcend old ways of thinking. In the times of AI, the smartphones that employees carry around are like an AI assistant that enables instant interaction and collaboration as well as real-time information look-up and response. As such, having AI tools play a part in employees’ everyday work is instrumental to cultivating AI application thinking.

According to Dr. Charles C.N. Wang, Dean of Industry-Academia Collaboration, Asia University, the university fosters AWS-certified professionals through peer learning. It also works with companies in central Taiwan to give real-world problems to students while encouraging cross-sector collaborations.

Among the students that Asia University educates, 70% apply their knowledge and skills for work and 30% can develop new technologies. They are encouraged to start thinking about their future career path in their junior year.

Furthermore, attaching importance to developing students’ global competence, Asia University actively recruits international students and promotes bilingual education. Apart from professional skills, Dr. Wang urged students to also make themselves proficient in math, programming languages and English while taking the initiative to learn different cultures and broaden their international horizons.

Yen-Ting Lin, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering of National Taiwan University and the developer of the Taiwan-LLM project, voiced his opinions from a student’s perspective. Colleges focus on building students’ ability to develop robust AI systems while the industry needs their employees to have the ability to apply AI technologies to solve real-world problems, said Lin.

Students can apply the AI skills they learn at school to various fields to increase work efficiency. He also noted that while learning and developing AI, students should also get a clear picture of the current trends and identify the fundamental problems so that they can use AI to improve existing processes.

When developing AI systems, aside from technical capabilities, developers need to pay attention to building users’ trust in AI. AI will only exert maximum benefits when it is used properly to help overcome inherent challenges that different fields are faced with.

The AI Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon drew 61 teams of students from 29 high schools and universities, alongside professionals from diverse industries. Following a month of training, teams showcased innovative and practical generative AI solutions