Taiwan using AI to fight disinformation campaigns, former minister says
MUNICH, Germany — Taiwan’s first-ever minister of digital affairs, Audrey Tang, told an audience at the Munich Cyber Security Conference on Friday that the island nation is using AI to battle disinformation on social media. She said that the technology is helping officials pre-bunk Chinese influence operations targeting the island before they spread online.
Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said the number of pieces of false or biased information distributed by China increased 60% in 2024, to 2.16 million from 1.33 million in 2023. According to a report released last month, the NSB said Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, were the main conduits for disinformation, along with platforms that explicitly target young people such as TikToK.
In response to these efforts, Tang launched what she called the "Alignment Assemblies" project two years ago, using open-source AI software to convene meetings of ordinary citizens to talk about dis- and mis-information. Tang served as minister of digital affairs from August 2022 to May 2024, and currently serves as the country’s ambassador-at-large.
“The Taiwan government sent 200,000 SMS invitations to random people in Taiwan asking them ‘How do you feel about information integrity?’” Tang said. “We brought them together and used AI to surface what they were worried about.”
They divided people into groups of ten, spreading them across dozens of virtual rooms and then AI acted as the moderator — managing speakers to ensure that everyone had an opportunity to speak. The AI moderator cajoled quiet participants to speak more and muted interruptions or verbal attacks.
Tang said large language models automatically captured, organized, and summarized everyone’s input in real-time.
The deliberative polling platform, developed by Stanford University’s Center for Deliberative Democracy, made the discussions of over 400 participants in 40 sessions instantly transparent. Participants could see where conversations converged, where disagreements remained, and what common concerns were shared, all of which improved the quality and depth of the discussion.
In her current role with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tang is encouraging major platforms to adopt algorithms that could spot disinformation.
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Dina Temple-Raston
is the Host and Managing Editor of the Click Here podcast as well as a senior correspondent at Recorded Future News. She previously served on NPR’s Investigations team focusing on breaking news stories and national security, technology, and social justice and hosted and created the award-winning Audible Podcast “What Were You Thinking.”