Taiwan Generative AI Application Hackathon

The disruptive power of generative AI is causing a paradigm shift in various fields. To strengthen the power of generative AI in Taiwan and expand the application of generative AI, DIGITIMES organized the AI ​​Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Application Hackathon.

The competition attracted many teams consisting of high school and university students, as well as people working in various industries. On the day of the final competition, experts from Amazon Web Services (AWS) shared their insights on the trends of generative AI technology. A panel discussion was held with industry leaders, government representatives, academics, and researchers focusing on generative AI talent development to reveal trends and employment opportunities in generative AI development.

The AI ​​Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Application Hackathon attracted 61 teams consisting of students from 29 high schools and universities and people working in various industries. After a month of training, the teams came up with generative AI solutions that demonstrated both creativity and usability.

The competition was split into a Hackathon and an Idea Exchange, where teams in the Hackathon division tackled problems related to their area of ​​expertise and developed solutions in the AWS environment using their own company's operational data. Participants in the Idea Exchange division formed their own teams and were able to focus on developing original ideas for generative AI applications using AWS PartyRock, a no-code service.

AWS experts explore trends in generative AI technology

In a series of talks on generative AI technology trends, AWS experts pointed out that the core values ​​of generative AI are to create, produce, provide insights, and enable innovative experiences. The technology can generate entirely new content and ideas while increasing business productivity, improving customer and employee experiences through unprecedented human-machine interactions. For example, Amazon Pharmacy used AWS AI/ML services to build an LLM-based chatbot that helps customer service agents answer questions more effectively, and a price estimator that optimizes user experience.

Advances in generative AI and machine learning cannot be realized without the support of high-performance computing and storage infrastructure. During the talk, AWS experts introduced AWS solutions from the perspective of storage and computing.

In terms of storage, Amazon FSx for Lustre integration with Amazon S3 data lakes supports fast random data access and high throughput, significantly improving training efficiency and reducing costs. In terms of compute, AWS offers cost-effective AWS Graviton processors, as well as AWS Inferentia and AWS Trainium accelerators purpose-built for deep learning and inference. In addition, AWS also offers new services and tools such as the Amazon S3 Connector for PyTorch to further enhance performance and cost benefits.

Generative AI solutions require the support of strong data structures. AI models are typically developed through methods such as in-context learning, fine-tuning models, or building from scratch. AWS offers a number of database and storage services that enable highly efficient data management and search, where data pipelines and data lakes play a key role.

Generative AI applications require efficient data management and search to run smoothly. AWS technologies and tools take generative AI performance and scalability to the next level, helping enterprises quickly deploy and run generative AI applications, improve data management efficiency, and further reap the benefits of AI.

Leveraging the power of AWS to build an end-to-end data strategy can help companies enhance their ability to analyze and gain insights into their business. According to AWS experts, Amazon OpenSearch Service can perform highly efficient search and analysis with significant optimizations for relevance and precision.

OpenSearch's vector engine searches billions of vector embeddings in just milliseconds, making it suitable for applications such as recommendation engines, image recognition and fraud detection.

WS also has data integration services that can easily synchronize data from Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon S3 to OpenSearch. Data management is not only much easier, but also more efficient and accurate. With the powerful data analytics capabilities and generative AI technologies enabled by AWS, enterprises can build comprehensive data strategies, implement data-driven innovations, and enjoy the prosperity that comes with it.

Industry and academic leaders communicate on AI generation and international talent development

In the panel discussion on generative AI talent training, industry and academic leaders interacted with the modern AI generation. Dr. Wu Zhuchuan, CEO of Feng Chia University Cloud Innovation School, who served as moderator, said that in the ICT era, it is nearly impossible for humans to live without technology. Feng Chia University Cloud Innovation School was established to actively increase the breadth and depth of cloud applications, as well as the effectiveness and benefits of talent training, through continuous collaboration between industry, government and academia.

Regarding talent demand, Allen Chen, vice president of platform and new product development at 104 Corporation, commented that Taiwan faces an extreme shortage of AI talent. Only one in five AI-related job openings are filled by qualified candidates. AI professionals enjoy promising career growth.

Chen pointed out that AI is already everywhere, and people who use AI need to be familiar with all kinds of devices to transcend old ways of thinking. In the age of AI, the smartphones employees carry are like AI assistants that enable instant dialogue and collaboration, real-time information search and response. Therefore, incorporating AI tools into employees' daily work helps cultivate AI application thinking.

According to Dr. Charles CN Wang, dean of Asia University's School of Industry-Academia Collaboration, the university develops AWS-certified professionals through peer learning and also partners with companies in central Taiwan to provide students with real-world problems and foster cross-department collaboration.

Of students educated at Asian University, 70% are able to apply their knowledge and skills to a job and 30% are able to develop new technologies. They are encouraged to start thinking about their future careers as early as their third year of university.

In addition, Asia University attaches great importance to cultivating students' international capabilities, actively recruits international students, and promotes bilingual education. Dr. Wang urged students to master mathematics, programming languages ​​and English in addition to their professional skills, and to actively learn about different cultures and broaden their international perspectives.

Lin Hsien-ting, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University and a Taiwan Law Master's project developer, shared her views from a student's perspective: While universities focus on cultivating students' abilities to develop robust AI systems, industry requires employees to have the ability to apply AI technology to solve real-world problems, Lin said.

Students can apply the AI ​​skills they learn in school to different fields to improve work efficiency, he said. He also pointed out that while learning and developing AI, students also need to have a clear grasp of current trends and identify underlying problems so that they can use AI to improve existing processes.

When developing AI systems, developers need to pay attention not only to technical capabilities but also to building user trust in the AI. AI can only be at its most effective when used properly to overcome the unique challenges faced by different sectors.

The AI ​​Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Application Hackathon attracted the participation of 61 teams of students from 29 high schools and universities, along with experts from various industries. After a month of training, the teams presented their innovative and practical generative AI solutions.