Hong Kong’s best minds must work together to shape the future of AI

Christopher Y.H. Chao says HKU is seizing the opportunities to collaborate with partners including Harvard and Tsinghua on research into AI and other innovations, and launch programmes that prepare graduates for the latest technology

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Illustration: Timothy Mcevenue. See: www.timothymcevenue.net

Christopher Y.H. Chao

Professor Christopher Y.H. Chao is dean of engineering at the University of Hong Kong.

Published: 7:45am, 22 Dec 2018Updated: 10:25am, 22 Dec 2018

The technology rivalry between China and the US is believed to have fuelled the lingering trade war between the world’s two largest economies. This month’s attention-grabbing arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou further highlighted the rising tension on the technology front.

However, no matter how long the Huawei saga or the trade war drags on, the hitherto rapid pace of technological development will continue. As reiterated by top academics at the Hong Kong International Artificial Intelligence Summit held late last month at the University of Hong Kong, years of research and development in AI have led to the rise of a powerful tool that can be applied to a lot of things to derive “intelligence” from available data. Machine learning, or data-driven learning, has emerged as a much-hyped concept among businesses and governments driven to maximise the use of human knowledge for the well-being of society.

Through the deployment of the latest technology, a host of social and economic issues, from transport, financial investment and services, pollution control and health care to manufacturing, could be resolved.

As we now know, myriad projects, including those run by start-ups, have proven to be financially viable while making social contributions with the help of AI. Speakers at the summit pointed to the significant progress made in areas such as speech recognition and certain banking services.

Local universities definitely have a pivotal role to play in shaping the future adoption of AI in Hong Kong and elsewhere, by furthering research on AI and nurturing graduates who are ready to embrace fast technological changes. The HKU-Cambridge AI Research Team, for example, is engaged in novel interdisciplinary research integrating AI, medical sciences, social sciences and so on to address complex social problems in Hong Kong, mainland China and the rest of the world.