How the Greater Bay Area can be Silicon Valley, Wall Street and – with Hong Kong’s help – a global AI centre all at once
- The Greater Bay Area can leverage Hong Kong’s research universities and financial hub status to supply AI tech around the world – provided regulatory differences are smoothed out
At the China Development Forum, in Beijing in March, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said: “In my view, the Greater Bay Area has good potential to become not only the Silicon Valley of the East but also Silicon Valley and Wall Street within the same city cluster.”
In addition, I believe the bay area scheme has great potential to be a global AI centre, supplying artificial intelligence technology not only to this region, but throughout the world. Here’s why.
It will need a place with an innovation ecosystem to attract and nurture AI talent and start-ups, provide a robust business, financial and legal infrastructure to support growth, as well as the ability to tap into readily available markets. The Greater Bay Area has the potential to become such a place.
The common characteristics of any major technology hub around the world are three basic but very important ingredients – talent, money and market.
The ability to attract and nurture talent is probably the most important factor for technology innovation. That is why most technology hubs have grown and developed around top research universities. For San Francisco, there is Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. New York has Columbia and New York universities. Tokyo has the University of Tokyo.