Taipei's DPP mayoral candidate Puma Shen is pitching an AI plan for the city — good news for young workers and small shops if it happens, but it is still just a campaign promise.

• Shen wants "AI coaches" — skilled people placed inside city departments, shopping districts, and businesses for three to six months to find real problems and build tools for them.
• The point is to stop sending civil servants to AI classes and instead put people who already know AI into the field.
• He also wants the city to buy bulk AI licenses directly from major providers and hand out free usage to young people, replacing today's messy subsidy paperwork.
• The ideas came out of a Tokyo meeting with about a hundred Taiwanese living in Japan, who pushed him on housing, elder care, jobs, and keeping talent in Taipei.
• He also toured Shibuya's designated smoking areas, saying Taipei should build such spaces into new developments from the start instead of adding them after complaints.

Outlook: These stay proposals unless Shen wins the Taipei mayoral race, so expect rivals to test how much of it the city could actually pay for.