Hong Kong should build AI plan around ‘competitive’ strengths, industry leaders say

Hong Kong should draft a five-year plan that includes an artificial intelligence (AI) focus that is not too broad, makes the most of its core strengths and attracts the best talent to develop the sector, industry leaders have said.

At the South China Morning Post’s China Conference on Tuesday, titled “Intelligence at Scale: Hong Kong’s AI-Powered Future”, speakers at two panel discussions considered how Hong Kong could deliver on its AI aspirations and the city’s readiness as a launch pad for mainland Chinese enterprises.

Zhang Xiaoyan, vice-president of the China Centre for Information Industry Development, an institution under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that as Hong Kong formulated its first five-year plan, it should refrain from drafting technology plans that were too broad.

“Hong Kong, because it’s relatively smaller in terms of economy, so your first five-year plan should not be a very broad one. Just like the mainland, especially in the AI sector, you do not need to cover all the frontier technologies,” Zhang said.

“You can pick the [strongest or] most competitive scenarios in Hong Kong, such as urban development, healthcare or finance, instead of manufacturing, because manufacturing in Hong Kong accounts for only 1 per cent of your general gross domestic product (GDP). So let us learn from the mainland, but also keep [in line] with Hong Kong’s features and advantages in AI development.”

Zhang added that the city should establish pilot programmes for cross-border data transfers to complement the mainland by building high-level industry data sets in collaboration with mainland partners.