And then for the state to refocus, to have the big tech play the role of utilities, and then to make them compete on fulfilling the specification crowdsourced by the everyday people, especially vulnerable communities.

If you do this very simple change, then this is not about putting the brake on the regulation. It is not about pressing the pedal on innovation. It is about building the steering wheel so that communities can steer the technology toward digital freedom. And so, the false dilemma just dissolves itself once you build the steering wheel with the communities.

Thank you.

For me, the most captivating aspect of gaming has never been exquisite graphics or high scores. Rather, it is those moments of decision that compel me to pause my mouse hand and reflect deeply.

There has been a heated discussion in the gaming world recently, sparked by Dan Houser—the creator of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption—who issued a warning about "AI Mad Cow Disease." As a godfather of the open-world genre, Houser holds a deep anxiety regarding the potential flattening of the human experience.

"AI Mad Cow Disease" refers to a kind of model inbreeding. It happens when AI stops learning from authentic experiences and instead repeatedly replicates the synthetic data of the previous generation. It is like the parable of the blind men and the elephant: the first generation touches a leg and believes it to be the elephant; the next generation then hallucinates an entire body based solely on that single leg.

A model mimicking Van Gogh's style might produce an image that looks similar, but it cannot comprehend the feelings of a human being standing on the precipice of a mental breakdown. Over time, such creations drift further and further from a sense of reality.

Recently, a game was disqualified from an award for relying heavily on AI-generated content. This backlash does not reflect a fear of technology, but rather a player's instinctive rejection of "outsourcing the soul."

I do not reject generative AI; it is an excellent assistant. The problem is that when it comes to bestowing meaning, AI falls short.

In the greatest video games, the moments that touch us most deeply are often those where there is no single correct answer. AI excels at finding the path with the highest win rate within a given set of rules, yet it cannot comprehend why different people, facing the same moral dilemma, would make starkly different choices.

But it is precisely because of this ambiguity that games possess meaning, which in turn catalyzes community. Because your choice differs from mine, we have the motivation to share, to argue, and ultimately, to build a connection.

If a game's ending were merely a standardized, high-score answer calculated by an AI, this interaction would vanish.

This is the fundamental reason why games cannot be fully replaced by AI: what we care about is the human connection built through these authentic choices.

This parallels many forms of content creation. An AI-generated song might be catchy, but if there is no genuine life experience behind it—no creator who can be understood or spark curiosity—the relationship cannot be sustained and quickly becomes tiresome. It fails to unearth new meaning with every exploration and share.

Only works that allow us to see one another within a dilemma can—like Arthur Morgan, the protagonist of the classic Red Dead Redemption 2—live on in the hearts of countless players even years later, triggering reflection across generations and creating true meaning.

If we position AI as a bridge between people, it can be a wonderful facilitator, like a warm, inviting bonfire. But if you place it in the spot where a human should stand, that is the onset of "Mad Cow Disease"—a spark likely to become a forest fire that destroys interpersonal trust, burning beyond all control.

Great to see you. Welcome to Taiwan.

Yes.

And it's not a crisis, it's a continuous condition.

Well, it's cyberattack, and it's also infoattacks. We also receive millions of attempts at polarizing our society from Beijing. And what it wants, of course, is to paint the picture to the Taiwanese people that democracy only leads to chaos, democracy does not deliver, and try to sabotage people's beliefs in the democratic process. And according to V-Dem, the research institute, for the past 12 years, Taiwan was the top target in the world when it comes to information manipulation. And the great thing also is that we're the most free in all of Asia when it comes to internet freedom. So we don't believe in censorship. We don't believe in takedown. We believe in fighting this kind of attack through democratic resilience.

Yes, and we also build what's called a "pro-social media." That is to say, while the antisocial corner of the social media amplifies the extremes—so the polarization attack just caricatures both sides to divide our people—we build spaces where it's like a geothermal engine. In goes the conflict, plate against plate, but then it absorbs that conflict and turns it into co-creative energy so that we can find a policy proposal that both sides can live with and are creative.

For example, we overcame the debate about marriage equality between people who defend the traditions and the people who want equal rights by figuring out they're just not kinship. So the individual enjoys the same right, but no family kinship is formed. So this kind of co-creation de-escalates the explosive magma energy, turning it into geothermal energy.

Well, first of all, our Constitution never protected foreign robots when it comes to the freedom to reach people. So, in Taiwan, we have very strong what's called KYC, or "Know Your Customers," requirements. So, for example, all advertisements—not just political or social issues—require a KYC digital signature. And when people see, for example, investment schemes generated by deepfake and so on, if they lost, say, $7 million to a non-KYC advertisement online, Facebook or whichever social media that posts unsolicited... is now liable in Taiwan for the full damage. And so because of that, we have very strong attribution to all the paid messages online.

Yes, right? Yes. And you talk about astroturfing, right? People unpaid, just show up in swarms. We have this idea called "selective disclosure." That is to say, we have infrastructure in Taiwan so that we know somebody posting online or engaging in our conversation is over 18, but we don't need to learn their age. Or... I was just in Berlin using this technology. We can prove Ich bin ein Berliner without showing my address or my real name. So this kind of selective disclosure safeguards our conversational public sphere without doxxing anyone.

So, for example, when we came up with the anti-deepfake rule, we sent SMS text messages to 200,000 random numbers around Taiwan asking, "What should we do together?" And then people volunteered to have a conversation online. So we chose 447 people, statistically the same demographic as the Taiwanese population, and the Beijing trolls cannot enter this protected conversation.

Not at all. I think we are actually anti-fragile. In the sense that whenever a new attack comes, it becomes a social object. People have conversations around it. In 2019, we changed our basic education curriculum. It used to say "media literacy." But now it's "media competency."

Literacy is when you consume information, maybe with some critical thinking. But competency is when you find out what's going on together with your classmates. So it's exercising the civic muscle. And our young people, our 15-year-olds, are top of the world when it comes to civic knowledge, according to ICCS in 2022. So even before they turn 18, they already feel they can change the direction of the society, starting petitions, movements, like going to school one hour later because they show scientific proof one more hour of sleep gets you better grades. It's a popular petition.

Exactly.

Yeah, as I mentioned, what they want is just to paint a grand narrative that only authoritarianism is effective, is efficient. For example, in 2020, they used to say that only authoritarian society can do lockdown well compared to other places in the world, and contain the virus. But Taiwan showed conclusively, democracy actually works even better. We only lost seven people to COVID in 2020. We never locked down any city during the three years. Yet, we reported record economic growth because the TSMC never stopped churning out chips.

So the point here is that democracy can deliver better if we turn the energy that is on the conflict, on the extreme, not as fire to be put out, not canceling anyone, but rather to invite them in so they become co-creative.

I think their main goal, as I said, is to decimate the trust in the civil society, with each other, and also with the process.

Yeah, and what they want to do, of course, was to paint the Beijing model, authoritarian model, as a better model. And so to support, for example, political parties, presidential candidates here that would welcome an authoritarian model. But it really backfired. Last year, 2024, in our presidential election. First time, none of the three candidates supported the Hong Kong model, so-called "one country, two systems." And it really backfired because after looking at what they did in Hong Kong, nobody in Taiwan sincerely believes that the authoritarian system is a better fit for our society.

Yeah, I think we showed democratic resilience, and it is very inspiring to people in authoritarian regimes. So not just people in Beijing; all over the world. People pay attention to how we overcome information manipulation, how to overcome transnational repression, and so on, using technologies. In Taiwan, democracy is a kind of social technology. So we upgrade democracy every few months, and that is very inspiring. I was just in the Berlin Freedom Week, and people from all over the world gathered together to learn about how we can, on this side of the wall, in the free society, we can use this to overcome the monopolization, the digital colonialism, by the big tech. But exactly the same technology, on the other side of the world, in authoritarian regimes, can be used to guarantee the freedom of secure communication, freedom of assembly, and so on online.

Yeah, so on my laptop, you can see the Mozilla symbol, and above that, the ROOST—the Robust Open Online Safety Tools. The ROOST is something that I am a trustee of. We believe that any moderation standards belong in the communities. It should be the families, the communities, that set the terms of service, not the big tech to set the terms of service. And we also believe that if any content moderation needs to be done, it's in a very specific scope, not by the big tech in a universal scope.

So each community can, of course, say, for example, we talk about here the biblical "creation care." And another community may talk about "climate justice." They have very different standards. But if using open protocol, they can also do social translation between the two. So to understand, they have very concrete object-level things they can do together. And if one side cancels the other by lobbying to the big tech, then, of course, you don't have good conversation between those different communities.

I think good conversation is a precondition to any solutions. Of course, the solutions depend on the actual configuration of the physics involved, as well as the science involved. However, I think the communitarian spirit—the spirit that people feel that technology is fostering the relational health between people in the community, instead of sucking individuals out so that they don't belong in any community anymore—I think this is really a precondition to any object-level solutions.

Yeah, I believe that we're in the cycle of AI as "addictive intelligence."

So, it means AI systems, when they're trained, mostly they're trained to maximize some number. So, for example, social media is trained on maximizing engagement, or the time people spend on touch screens. And engagement through enragement, right? Exactly. Uh, and, uh, but if you spend too much time on this kind of cycle, then it feels a little bit like a hamster in a hamster wheel. Feeling great, exercising, uh, but no steering power over where the wheel is going. Actually, the wheel isn't going anywhere. But if you want to go anywhere, it should not be the "human in the loop" of AI. It should be "AI in the loop" of humans. That is to say, assistive intelligence.

So to your point, if people want to meet in real life, there are also technologies that can help you to throw parties, to plan meetups, to do translation between different ideas and languages, to make people listen to each other better, make better meeting notes out of a real-life conversation. And these, what I call assistive intelligence, are like eyeglasses. They are just to help us see each other more clearly. But they are not here to replace my eyes.

Yeah, definitely. In Taiwan... Okay, I'll wait for the animals.

So, for example, if you look at my computer screen, you don't see any color.

So, my phone, also grayscale. Yes.

Yes. Really? And no attachment. Right? I can put it down anytime. I don't feel like I'm losing a limb or something. Because it doesn't become more vivid than the reality around us. So you are much more vivid than my screen. That's the hack.

It works very well. In Taiwan, in classrooms, we only have large screens, I mean, for sharing. So it could be laptops, it could be tablets, but we mostly ban small-screen touch screens in classrooms. So, children learn from very early on that the internet, the screens, are meant for sharing. It's a social thing.

Well, it's the Mozilla sign. So it's M, not an A. But, of course, it has its roots in anarchism. I am a spiritual Daoist. Daoists believe in wu wei, or effortless action. So we don't believe in coercion. We believe in voluntary cooperation. It's basically the idea here is that I'm at a Lagrange point, a middle point, between governments and the movements. So I'm not pulled into either orbit. I'm just effortlessly floating around the two gravity centers, relaying messages between the two. So I'm not working for the government; I'm working with the government. And also working with the people, not just for the people.

And the point here is that instead of coercion, we believe in people in their community. So each community closer to a threat already, probably, knows how to overcome those threats. It just has no political visibility by the elites in power. So in Taiwan, 10 years ago, we peacefully occupied our parliament for three weeks. And instead of just protesting against the trade deal with Beijing, we demonstrated—half a million people on the street, many more online—can come to agreements on what to do with Beijing. And the head of the parliament, Wang Jin-pyng at a time, at the end of three weeks, said, "The people's idea is better than our idea. We'll just go with the people's ideas." So that is not a protest; it is a demonstration.

Certainly. So that was in March 2014. The Taiwanese parliament at the time, under President Ma Ying-jeou, who was enjoying a 9% approval rating.

Yes.

9%. Yes. So in a country of 23.5 million, that means anything he says, more than 20 million people are skeptical. And we were very skeptical about this trade deal that was suddenly passed with Beijing that would allow Beijing investments into our then-new 4G infrastructure. So it would run on Huawei or ZTE. It would allow Beijing investments into our newspapers, into our communication infrastructure. And that, of course, is very dangerous.

Because the argument goes that, "Oh, it's just private sector investment." But as we all know, there is no true private sector in Beijing. At any time, the so-called private company can be taken over and become de facto state-controlled. So every time we receive an update from Huawei, we would have to check again whether it has been taken over by the state. But because they don't have independent journalism or whistleblowing, it's very difficult to actually know what's going on there, right? So the system risk analysis is much more costly than if we just went with some European ideas and European solutions.