Opinion

What Hong Kong’s reaction to ChatGPT says about the city’s appetite for innovation

The approach to the AI-powered chatbot adopted by the city’s universities reflects Hong Kong’s lack of preparedness to embrace new technology

The government should not only be setting up a regulatory and policy framework but also demonstrate it is capable of taking a risk

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A child gazes at a robot at an exhibition on humanoid robots at the Science Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui, in November 2020. More recently, ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence platform that returns humanlike responses to questions, has taken the world by storm. Photo: Winson Wong

John Hanzhang Ye is a PhD student in science and technology history at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and also holds an MPhil degree in sociology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Published: 8:15am, 14 Apr 2023

In recent months, there has been much discussion of the impact of advances in artificial intelligence technology, in particular ChatGPT. The appearance of the AI-powered chatbot sparked global disruption that caught tech companies – from Google in the US to Baidu in China – off guard.

At the government level, the UK issued a pro-innovation policy paper on regulation of artificial intelligence in March following the release of a national AI strategy in 2021. In comparison, Hong Kong has an innovation and technology blueprint, which makes reference to AI, and this year’s budget proposes establishing an AI supercomputing centre, but the city needs a more targeted approach to AI development.

The choices of the city’s universities are instructive here. In February, the University of Hong Kong said the use of ChatGPT or similar tools in classwork, coursework and assessments, without prior approval, would be treated as plagiarism during the current semester. Chinese University has adopted a similar approach. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has left the decision to instructors.

Former Hong Kong financial secretary John Tsang Chun-wah criticised universities banning the use of the technology, saying, “The current education situation in Hong Kong is teachers of the 20th century using a curriculum from the 19th century to train students in the 21st century.”