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President of Taiwan joins Pope Francis in call for regulating AI

January 31, 2024 Catholic News Agency 2
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a press conference at the presidential office in Taipei on Dec. 27, 2022. / Photo by SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images

Rome Newsroom, Jan 31, 2024 / 16:10 pm (CNA).

President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen sent a letter to Pope Francis on Wednesday joining the pontiff in calling for greater regulation of artificial intelligence, reaffirming what Ing-wen said was Taiwan’s commitment “to promote peace and improve the quality of life of all humanity.” 

Noting that Taiwan “is eager to work with the international community to build a more stable society,” the Jan. 31 letter reflected on the country’s position as a “​​world leader in the semiconductor industry.”

“As the wave of AI sweeps across the world, Taiwan will continue in its endeavor to be a highly reliable, effective, and secure partner in the international community,” the president continued. 

Taiwan is a vital player in the global development of AI. The growth in demand for accelerator chips produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the country’s largest company — and the world’s second-most-valuable semiconductor company — has helped fuel an economic rebound for the island, according to Bloomberg. 

Investing and developing AI tools also plays a critical role in maintaining Taiwan’s national security apparatus amid growing threats of military intervention and economic sanctions from Beijing.

Tsai highlighted these themes and underscored the broader ethical considerations of developing emerging technologies in her letter to the pope. 

“As Your Holiness has warned, the growing scope of AI applications and its implications for human values engender grave ethical risks, such as invasion of privacy, data manipulation, and illegal surveillance, which all have serious consequences for free and democratic societies,” she wrote. 

“For Taiwan, as for other democracies, one major challenge has been disinformation campaigns,” the president continued. “Taiwan will deepen cooperation with the Holy See across many areas as we work toward exercising good technological governance, maintaining social harmony and stability, and jointly creating a peaceful future for humanity.”

Tsai sent the letter in response to the pope’s message marking the 57th World Day of Peace, a celebration that is observed by the Catholic Church on Jan. 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. 

The pope’s message for the 2024 World Day of Peace was titled “Artificial Intelligence and Peace.” In it, the pontiff called on policymakers and international stakeholders to direct the development of AI toward “the pursuit of peace and the common good.”

The pope in his Dec. 14 letter underscored the risks posed by AI with its usage in automated warfare as well as the bias it can effect when used in the job hiring process, mortgage applications, and even criminal recidivism. These “systemic errors can easily multiply,” the pope argued.

The Holy Father stressed that AI is a supplemental technology as it can only “imitate or reproduce certain functions of human intelligence,” adding that “the unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced to programming a machine, which as ‘intelligent’ as it may be, remains a machine.” 

The ethical regulation and orientation of AI for the common good has been a common theme of Francis’ pontificate in recent years. In a Feb. 20, 2023, audience with the Pontifical Academy for Life, the pope urged the academy to study emerging technologies in order to “ensure that scientific and technological growth is reconciled more and more with a parallel development … in responsibility, values, and conscience.”

The Holy See is a vital diplomatic partner for Taipei as it is the only sovereign European entity that maintains diplomatic relations with the democratically governed island. 

Formal diplomatic relations between the Republic of China (ROC) and the Holy See were officially established in 1942. However, following the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the government of the Republic of China relocated to the island of Taiwan, which sits 110 miles off mainland China’s Southeastern coast. The Holy See, at present, does not maintain official diplomatic relations with the PRC.

Taiwan, or the Republic of China, currently maintains diplomatic relations with 12 states after the Pacific island nation of Narua severed relations on Jan. 15, two days after presidential elections in Taiwan, which saw the election of Lai Ching-te, the current vice president and staunch advocate for Taiwanese sovereignty.

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Jimmy Lai unlikely to receive a fair trial from Hong Kong judges, lawyer says

December 20, 2023 Catholic News Agency 0
Jonathan Price, a member of Jimmy Lai’s international legal team, appears on “EWTN News Nightly” with host Tracy Sabol on Dec. 19, 2023. / Credit: EWTN News Nightly

CNA Staff, Dec 20, 2023 / 11:55 am (CNA).

A lawyer representing embattled Catholic democracy activist Jimmy Lai said the Hong Konger is unlikely to receive a fair trial in the legal system that is now controlled by Chinese Communist Party authorities.

Lai’s trial in Hong Kong began this week. He was originally arrested in August 2020 under that year’s controversial national security law, which was passed by China’s communist-controlled government and sharply curtailed free speech in the region.

Lai has been imprisoned for over 1,000 days under the law. He has been accused of colluding with foreign adversaries and conspiracy to defraud and is facing a possible life sentence.

Jonathan Price, a human rights lawyer with the U.K.-based Doughty Street Chambers, which is representing Lai in international matters, told “EWTN News Nightly” host Tracy Sabol on Tuesday that Hong Kong — long a separate administrative region from the mainland Chinese government — is “now more or less indistinguishable from China.”

“Its legal system has been subverted” by the 2020 law, Price said; that law is controlled by a “politically appointed committee” rather than an impartial judiciary. 

“The judges in Jimmy Lai’s national security law trial … are handpicked judges, licensed, in effect, to try national security law cases because of their political fealty to Beijing,” Price told Sabol. 

“So in those circumstances, it is not how you or I would recognize fair judicial proceedings,” he said. “And you’ve got to remember as well that recently, the Hong Kong director of national security boasted that the national security law has a 100% conviction rate.” 

In “any rule-of-law compliant jurisdiction, that would be a red flag,” Price argued. “It cannot be right that literally everybody accused of a crime is guilty, but that’s how they’ve been operating the national security bill. So I’m afraid we don’t think that he’s likely to receive a fair trial.”

Lai has been vocal in his faith. He was baptized and received into the Church by Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, in 1997. He said in 2020 that his decision to stay in Hong Kong and place himself in danger was informed by his belief in God. 

Price on Tuesday echoed those remarks. He noted that Lai’s faith had “not been made a factor explicitly” in the trial against him. But “no doubt his faith played a part in the conviction with which he pursued his activities,” including pro-democracy activism.

Lai “saw that Chinese authoritarianism would ruin Hong Kong,” Price said. “And he made it his life’s work to try to hold onto the Hong Kong, and the freedoms in Hong Kong, that he loved, and those included the freedom for him to practice his religion.”

“So in many ways, his conviction [meant] that he stayed in Hong Kong when he could have left,” Price said. “He was a man of enormous means and huge international connections” and could easily have left the region to avoid arrest, Price said.

But “he chose to stay, and that is a mark of his conviction, a mark of his faith.”

Lai’s lawyers have asked the court to throw out sedition charges against the Catholic activist. The judges are expected to rule on that request by the end of the week, with the trial itself projected to continue for several months.

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