Opinion | Hong Kong must avoid jumping on AI bandwagon and focus on what it does best

Amid budget constraints, the city should gear research and innovation towards sectors where it has an advantage rather than follow trends

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Published: 5:30am, 10 Mar 2025

As an artificial intelligence (AI) craze sweeps across China following the rise of DeepSeek and Unitree Robotics, Hong Kong is eager to get on the bandwagon.

In unveiling Hong Kong’s 2025-26 budget late last month, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po expressed enthusiasm about the prospect of turning the city into “an international exchange and cooperation hub for the AI industry”.

As a result, he has earmarked HK$1 billion (US$128.6 million) to establish the Hong Kong AI Research and Development Institute. The organisation is expected to support the city’s innovative R&D sector and industrial application of AI.

Tentative signs indicate Hong Kong wants to go big on building AI into a core industry to drive the city’s innovation and technology even though it announced cuts in public spending to tackle its deficit, which amounted to HK$87.2 billion for the previous financial year.

While officials tout AI as a transformative force, scepticism is warranted. Hong Kong’s track record in pursuing cutting-edge technologies has been less than satisfactory, to say the least, and its current fiscal constraints raise doubts about its capacity to compete in this costly arena.

The city’s history of overambitious tech projects offers a cautionary tale. In 1999, amid great fanfare, Hong Kong launched initiatives to become a regional innovation leader, announcing the creation of Cyberport and Science Park. The two tech hubs were envisioned to usher in a new era of innovation in an economy that had long relied on property development and financial services.