Taiwan's low birth rate has a solution! AI demand is expected to usher in a golden decade, Li-Feng Jian: Doraemon is on the way.

Former Google General Manager Chien Li-feng points out that the AI agent trend is shifting toward task execution and inference computing power. The strong demand for hardware, combined with Taiwan's demographic structure, will usher in a golden decade.

At the International Trends Summit Forum on opening day, former Google Managing Director and Executive Yuan Economic Development Committee Innovation Economic Advisor Chien Li-feng analyzed that the strong demand for AI hardware, coupled with Taiwan's current demographic structure, creates a "golden decade" for Taiwan, which is also a critical period for Taiwan to overcome the challenge of a declining birthrate.

Source: Wang Yongcun Photography

All three AI trends are turning, with computing power demand changing in form and scale

In a volatile landscape, Chien Li-feng identified three major trend lines to watch.

First, software. AI evolving from "answering questions" to "executing tasks" is a key upgrade toward becoming "useful," and it is rapidly widening the gap between individuals. He described that with agents, Taiwan has already seen phenomena where one person equals ten, or one equals a hundred, while in Silicon Valley, cases of one person equaling a thousand have emerged.

Chien Li-feng described that a three-person team, backed by computing power, could achieve what 300,000 people might do. Organizations can no longer be assessed by headcount alone.

Second, hardware. Among computing power demands, the proportion of inference is gradually expanding. The industry generally predicts that as agents run extensively, inference will become the dominant computing power demand by 2030. A major reason is that the tokens consumed by agent operations far exceed those of simple Q&A.

Therefore, in the third economic trend, Chien Li-feng agrees that token usage will explode. At least initially, the most cost-effective agents are not consumer-side daily tasks, but high-level white-collar knowledge tasks, such as high-paying professional analysts.

Correspondingly, as "shovel sellers," suppliers need highly efficient and cost-effective shovels to achieve supply-demand balance. If miners cannot survive, the shovels won't sell.

Agents will impact all industries, and Taiwan will eventually feel it

Looking deeper at AI agents, from personal agents like "Little Lobster" OpenClaw to enterprise agents like Claude Code/Cowork, agents are not just a phenomenon for individual workers or small startup teams; they will impact all industries.

Besides continuing to monitor the presence of agents in e-commerce purchasing behavior, Chien Li-feng also pointed out that Gartner estimates that by 2028, 90% of global B2B procurement will involve AI as an intermediary. In the entire marketing and advertising ecosystem, the role of agents must be considered. It's possible that ad targeting will be aimed at agents, not humans.

In vertical industries, the trend is also becoming clear. In the U.S., AI agents have already moved beyond coding into finance, law, accounting, and other sectors. These are the three major professional consulting services that companies often outsource. If professional AI agents emerge, demand for human consultants will decrease, and the impact will be significant.

Source: Wang Yongcun Photography

"All professions ending in '-ist' or '-or' are severely impacted," Chien Li-feng said bluntly, but the remaining professionals will have greater service capacity and earn more money. A law firm that trains a specialized legal model will also become a software company, while those who remain will become managers.

The financial industry may be a more concrete example. Chien Li-feng noted that Anthropic expanded its AI agent service for the financial industry, Claude for Financial Services, in May. It can perform tasks such as due diligence, investment briefings, and market capitalization estimates at lower cost and time. He believes this release has led the market to revise its 2026 global financial AI agent market value upward to $2.45 billion.

Taiwan's financial institutions, which directly interface with their U.S. counterparts, are expected to be driven to accelerate the deployment of AI agents. Most of the general public in Taiwan are not yet aware of these vertical agent applications, but they are expected to start feeling the changes within a few months.

Chien Li-feng: Miss these five years, and the golden decade won't wait for you

From the Silicon Shield to the core of AI hardware, Taiwan faces external conditions of huge global demand and geopolitical risks, and its role is also changing. Chien Li-feng pointed out that the five shortages, industrial concentration, and geopolitics are indeed risks, but compared to the declining birthrate, a more noteworthy fact is: too few foreigners.

He pointed out that given the size of Taiwan's stock market and its GDP ranking, the proportion of foreign workers in Taiwan is too low. Attracting more foreign workers, combined with robots, could be a solution for building a sustainable economy.

Chien Li-feng recalled that during Japan's aging society, it envisioned the role of Doraemon to solve problems. Now, with AI and robots developing rapidly, "this Doraemon is already on its way."

Taiwan's stock market has grown rapidly in recent years, spawning international companies that rank among the world's largest by market capitalization, and many companies have ample capital. Seizing resources at this point is key to truly realizing the golden decade.

Chien Li-feng believes that Taiwan's industries should not only think about hardware-software integration but also have a "beyond hardware" global perspective. Hardware industries can leverage AI to achieve remote management capabilities such as R&D in Taiwan and production overseas, further building world-class smart manufacturing capabilities.

Software industries can also consider how to combine hardware advantages to go global together. Solving the pain points of the hardware industry and leveraging hardware industry advantages to strengthen themselves are his two major suggestions for software startup teams.

Taiwan has hardware supply chains and capital, and many international startups have already come seeking cooperation and investment. Chien Li-feng said, "If you don't seize this best opportunity, the opportunity won't wait for you in five years."

• This article is republished with permission from: Digital Times
• Original title: Chien Li-feng: Doraemon is on the way, coming soon! Taiwan's declining birthrate has a solution, but miss this wave and you miss the golden decade
• Original author: Fu Wanqi