All Hong Kong government departments will use a local version of ChatGPT by the end of this year, the city’s innovation chief has said, days after OpenAI blocked access to its application programming interface for the city and mainland China.
Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong said while the artificial intelligence (AI) application was mainly developed for the government’s clerical system, the government would eventually open it to all residents.
Sun described the new system, currently known as the civil servants’ clerical assistance system, as the “Hong Kong version of ChatGPT”.
It was developed by the Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre under InnoHK, a centre established by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in collaboration with four other universities to conduct research and development on generative AI technology in October 2023.
“We will eventually open the use of the system to the whole society of Hong Kong,” he told a radio programme, adding the system would be refined based on user feedback.
“The system will only function well by extensive training and usage, and our trial of the system has been smooth,” the minister added.
Sun work on such a system began after the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI.
But OpenAI announced late last month that it would start blocking connections to its API from regions that it does not support starting from July 9 in the US.
Unsupported regions include those that are sanctioned by the US – such as Iran, North Korea and Russia – along with the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau.
Sun said it would be better for the government to develop such a system and open its use for the industries given the huge investment required.
“Given Hong Kong’s current situation, it will be very hard for big companies such as Microsoft or Google to subsidise such projects, so let’s have the Hong Kong government do this job,” he said.
While OpenAI’s parent is a non-profit organisation, Microsoft has invested US$13 billion in a for-profit subsidiary, for what would be a 49 per cent stake, according to a Reuters report.
Separately, Hong Kong and the mainland launched a pilot scheme last December to enable easier cross-border data transfers in the Greater Bay Area.
The unprecedented move was aimed at making it easier for companies to comply with the mainland’s existing rules for exporting data, with the first phase set to involve the banking, credit referencing and healthcare sectors.
Sun said around 100 organisations had joined the scheme and the government was planning to expand to cover more sectors in the region.
Under the scheme, a standard contract would be introduced to ensure the safe and orderly flow of personal data within the bay area for contractual purposes.
The technology chief also responded to calls for more land to set up data centres by the industries, saying the government should consider the site’s requirements given that computing power of such centres’ needed high volumes of electricity.
