Hong Kong officials tout city’s AI credentials and mainland connector role to woo executives at tech event

Hong Kong secretary for innovation Sun Dong tells Economist conference city is a bridge to mainland China and poised to be major AI hub
Cyber-sovereignty may not yet be a liability for AI development, says keynote speaker Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder

Artificial intelligence

Matt HaldaneandKelly Le

Published: 8:30pm, 27 Feb 2024

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Hong Kong officials have touted the city’s continued strength as a bridge to China and ability to adapt to the artificial intelligence (AI) era to a room full of tech executives and entrepreneurs.

At the Economist Impact’s first “Technology for Change Asia” conference in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong highlighted the importance of AI and data science for Hong Kong as one of China’s key strategic industries.

However, Sun also noted the challenges that still exist in areas such as information security and privacy – a topic that hung over the conference as attendees grappled with the risks as well as the opportunities of recent AI developments.

“As we enter into a new era of technological revolution and industrial transformation with artificial intelligence, Hong Kong is striving to become an international innovation and technology hub,” Sun said, pointing to recent policies like the plan to launch 100 digital initiatives under a new Digital Policy Office.

Hong Kong has sought to establish itself as an Asian data hub that serves as a link between mainland China and the rest of the world, but Beijing’s tighter regulation of data leaving the mainland has complicated the special administrative region’s goals in this area.

The mainland’s walled-off internet has also raised questions about its ability to compete in generative AI, which requires models trained on a wide swathe of data.

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Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, was a keynote speaker and talked about the impact of AI. Speaking on the sidelines of the event, he said so-called cyber-sovereignty policies have not had a big impact on AI development so far.

“If you had a Chinese large language model AI, I imagine upon deep querying, if it’s trained only on approved sources versus global sources, you would find certain differences for sure,” Wales said. “Actually in some ways it might be one of the ways to break down some boundaries, just because I think AI companies are going to train on every scrap of data they can get their hands on one way or another.”

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, discusses the impact of generative AI at the Economist Impact event “Technology for Change Asia” on February 27, 2024. Photo: SCMP/ Matt Haldane

With regard to Hong Kong’s AI development, Sun emphasised government support through training and research, as well as a new AI supercomputing centre at Cyberport to launch this year. The infrastructure will support “strong local demand for high-performance computing power” in the AI industry, he said.

Andy Wong, head of innovation and technology at InvestHK, joined a panel specifically on the Greater Bay Area (GBA), a scheme to link Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland cities. He highlighted efforts to develop talent and investment across the entire region.

“We’ve got everything,” Wong said. “We’ve got the innovation, we’ve got the market, we’ve got the manufacturing – [and it] is not usual to find such a place in the world.”

Andy Wong, head of innovation and technology at InvestHK, speaks at the Economist Impact event on February 27, 2024. Photo: SCMP/ Matt Haldane

Despite recent policy changes on the mainland and the exit of a number of tech firms from Hong Kong in recent years, it is hard to “count Hong Kong out”, said Arshad Chowdhury, managing partner at Betatron Venture Group, on the same panel.

Chowdhury said he expects fintech and blockchain development initiatives to “bear fruit in the next few years” and support the tech ecosystem.

The two-day event is hosting a number of executives and key decision makers in industries including AI and Web3, another area in which Hong Kong is seeking to become an international hub. The conference, which took place in Singapore in 2023, is set to be held in Hong Kong for two more years.

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In his keynote interview, Wales noted that continuing challenges in generative AI to be addressed include its propensity to produce convincing but false information.

Wikipedia, Wales said, has been able to foster trust by being transparent about where its information comes from, and now something similar is needed for AI. And while AI may be an equaliser when it comes to accessing certain types of information, Wales said information fragmentation remains a concern.

“I worry more, not in the AI world so much, about the rising balkanization of the internet and people trying to throw up barriers to communication between different people in the world,” he told the Post after his talk.