A tech entrepreneur has pledged to rebuild a free database created over nearly three decades by the late Hong Kong corporate governance activist David Webb, bringing it ‘into the modern era” with the help of AI.
Keith Li King-wah, co-founder and principal trainer of Allytic AI, announced on his Facebook page on Wednesday that he would rebuild Webb-site’s database of 27 years with the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Webb, who died aged 60 from metastatic prostate cancer in January this year, had announced months before his death that his website would shut down.
“I won’t allow anyone to carry on Webb-site.com itself, because I would not want it potentially polluted or corrupted with clickbait, crypto-scams or worse, or used to advocate something of which I would not have approved,” he declared in a blog post last year. “The editorial side of it has to die with me.”
The database aggregates publicly available information on a wide range of topics from the board compositions and reporting speed of listed companies to Hong Kong consumer prices and energy consumption trends.
Li noted that under Webb’s instructions, the site’s data and programs were released into the public domain for free use, provided the Webb-site brand name was not used.