HONG KONG, 16 Jul (AP) \u2014 Hong Kong\u2019s government is testing the city\u2019s own ChatGPT -style tool for its employees, with plans to eventually make it available to the public, its innovation minister said after OpenAI took extra steps to block access from the city and other unsupported regions.<\/p>\n
Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong said on a Saturday radio show that his bureau was trying out the artificial intelligence program, called \u201cdocument editing co-pilot application for civil servants,\u201d to further improve its capabilities. He plans to have it available for the rest of the government this year.<\/p>\n
The program was developed by a generative AI research and development center led by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in collaboration with several other universities.<\/p>\n
The system\u2019s writing assistance functions could help draft, translate and summarize documents to enhance the efficiency of civil servants, said the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer. The program\u2019s database and large language model were independently developed by the center, it said.<\/p>\n
Sun said the model would provide functions like graphics and video design in the future. To what degree it would compare to the capabilities of ChatGPT was unclear.<\/p>\n
He told the radio show that industry players and the government would play a role in the model\u2019s future development.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven Hong Kong\u2019s current situation, it\u2019s difficult for Hong Kong to get giant companies like Microsoft and Google to subsidize such projects, so the government had to start doing it,\u201d Sun said.<\/p>\n
Beijing and Washington are locked in a race for AI supremacy, with China having ambitions to become the global leader in AI by 2030.<\/p>\n
China, including Hong Kong and neighboring Macao, is not on the list of \u201csupported countries and territories\u201d of OpenAI, one of the best-known artificial intelligence companies.<\/p>\n
The ChatGPT maker has not explained why certain territories were excluded but said accounts in those places attempting to access its services may become blocked.<\/p>\n
According to a post on OpenAI\u2019s online forum and local media reports, the company announced in an email to some users that it would be taking additional measures to block connections from regions not on the approved list starting July 9.<\/p>\n
Francis Fong, the honorary president of the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation, said it was hard to say whether the capabilities of the program in Hong Kong could match those of ChatGPT. With the input of AI companies in the city, Fong said he believed it could technologically catch up with the standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill it become the top? Maybe not necessarily be as close as that. But I believe it won\u2019t be too far behind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also said a locally developed AI program might more accurately address local language and localized issues, but adding it would \u201cmake sense\u201d if the final product appears to be \u201cpolitically correct.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like most foreign websites and applications, ChatGPT is technically unavailable in China because of the country\u2019s firewall, which censors the internet for residents. Determined individuals can still gain access via commonly available \u201cvirtual private networks\u201d that bypass restrictions.<\/p>\n
Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba and Baidu have already rolled out primarily Chinese-language AI models similar to ChatGPT for public and commercial use. However, these AI models must abide by China\u2019s censorship rules.<\/p>\n
In May, China\u2019s cyberspace academy said an AI chatbot was being trained on President Xi Jinping\u2019s doctrine, a stark reminder of the ideological parameters within which Chinese AI models will operate.<\/p>\n
Also in May, SenseTime, a major Chinese artificial intelligence company, launched SenseChat for users in Hong Kong, where most of the population speaks Cantonese as their mother tongue rather than Mandarin, which is more widely spoken in mainland China. But a check on Tuesday found the application could not provide answers to politically sensitive questions, such as what the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 and Hong Kong\u2019s protests in 2019 were about.<\/p>\n
During the 1989 crackdown, Chinese troops opened fire on student-led pro-democracy protesters, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands, dead, and that remains a taboo subject in mainland China.<\/p>\n
In 2019, protests that started over unpopular Hong Kong legislation morphed into an anti-government movement and the greatest political challenge to Beijing\u2019s rule since the former British colony returned to China in 1997.<\/p>\n
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