DIGITALLY ENABLED OUTREACH : TAIWAN GLOBAL ESSAY

 

TAIWAN : IN MANY parts of the world Taiwan is cited repeatedly as a leader in the practice of  digitally enabled outreach to citizens to solicit their views on a range of subjects.

The issues tackled by citizens there have included the rules for admitting Uber to compete with local taxi companies and setting priorities to shape A.I. policy.

Taiwan uses what it calls '' alignment assemblies, '' soliciting the ideas and views of thousands of randomly selected citizens. One such assembly on misinformation online this year helped influence  anti-fraud legislation that includes stronger reporting and disclosure requirements for big tech social networks.

A key to Taiwan's success, said Saffron Huang, co-founder of the Collective Intelligence Project, which has worked with the Taiwanese government, is that the citizen views have repeatedly been translated into policy actions, which has built trust in the process.

Audrey Tang, Taiwan's founding digital minister, said the online forums could be '' a very effective way for citizens to contribute to the agenda and guide the trajectory of technology policy, instead of the brakes and pedals of traditional regulation.'' 

The conservative contributors to the project also see a strong ecosystem of civic and other independent institutions - like those in Taiwan - as crucial counterweights to the rising power of the big tech companies.

But they regard them as players in a marketplace for ideas best left free of most government controls.

'' It is A.I. regulation, not A.I. that threatens democracy,'' wrote John H. Cochrane, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

The main danger Mr.Cochrane said, is having a government or corporate bureaucracy decide what is and is not appropriate speech. ''We're talking about censorship,'' he said.

Regulation, Mr. Cochrane said, should come after abuses become clear instead of pre-emptively setting rules. Who in 2004, when Facebook was founded, could have predicted the problems coming with social networks harming teenage girls in particular?

'' It's a process of constant learning and reform,'' Mr. Cochrane said. '' Bit by bit, in a contentious democracy, that's how we figure out what to do.'' 

The World Students Society thanks Steve Lohr.