How a Hong Kong charity is using AI to help migrant workers tackle exploitation
Migrasia says AI chatbot PoBot serves as centralised call centre, providing instant support and gathering data to identify patterns of abuse
Overwhelmed by a high volume of inquiries, a 17-member Hong Kong charity offering pro bono help to migrant workers has turned to artificial intelligence (AI) to scale up its operations.
David Bishop, co-founder and director of local non-governmental organisation Migrasia, described the systemic abuse in global labour migration as a “climate change-level issue”, as ageing populations across major economies worsen labour shortages.
Likening the organisation’s AI chatbot, PoBot, to a centralised call centre for migrant workers, Bishop said the technology offered a scalable way to deliver instant support while gathering data to expose underlying patterns of exploitation.
“Even though there are tens of millions of people that have gone to work in other countries, there is not a single government in the world that has a call-centre-type thing for these people,” Bishop said.
To maximise accessibility, the team embedded PoBot directly into chat applications already popular among migrant workers – such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp – rather than requiring users to download a stand-alone app.
“It gives us data which we can use to monitor trends,” Bishop added, noting that the team used these insights to alert governments to emerging issues.