Hong Kong unveils rules for ‘responsible’ AI use as it gets ahead of disruptive technology – Technologist
October 28, 2024
Hong Kong’s government has outlined its first guidelines on the “responsible” use of artificial intelligence (AI) during FinTech Week, as regulators strive to get ahead of the curve of a technological revolution that will almost certainly disrupt banking and financial services.
Banks, brokers, asset managers and any other financial institution that want to use AI “must formulate an AI governance strategy to provide direction on how [the] systems should be implemented and used, and offer advisory and training services for on-premise deployment”, according to a government press release.
“Hong Kong’s financial market is open and prudent towards the application of AI, [so] we will closely monitor the developments and draw on the experiences of the mainland and overseas” because the technology is “constantly evolving”, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said during the opening of the FinTech Week event.
AI has become the focus of FinTech Week, the ninth year that the annual conference has been hosted by InvestHK and Finoverse. This year’s event, which runs from October 28 to November 1 , will emphasise Hong Kong’s role as the “connector” between international business and China, the world’s second-largest AI market behind the US. About 700 companies are exhibiting at the weeklong event, including SenseTime, Tencent Holdings and ByteDance.
The government intends to fully leverage Hong Kong’s advantages to bring together the mainland and international data as well as the free-flow of information to promote the use of AI in the financial sector for accelerating the development of new quality productive forces tailored to local conditions, Chan said.
To better understand AI, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) will make its AI model and its computing resources available to Hong Kong’s financial services industry, including training in AI applications, Chan announced. The HKUST was the highest-ranked local institution last year in data science, ranked 10th globally in the QS Top Universities Ranking.