Hong Kong invests billions to accelerate innovation of impactful solutions as an AI-powered future comes into focus

Hong Kong's HK$3 billion Artificial Intelligence Subsidy Scheme (AISS) marks a policy shift from solely supporting AI research to accelerating the development of real-world applications. This focus aims to integrate AI across diverse sectors like healthcare, finance, and smart-city development, with the stated ambition of fostering tangible economic and social benefits.

The scheme provides computational resources through Cyberport's Artificial Intelligence Supercomputing Centre, which offers a total capacity exceeding 5,000 petaFLOPS. By subsidizing access to this infrastructure, the AISS intends to expedite the transformation of AI R&D projects. Over 30 projects have been approved, receiving more than HK$1.7 billion in subsidies since the scheme began.

One project highlighted is a multimodal large language model for medical diagnosis and surgery from the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR). This initiative, which includes an ultrasound foundation model trained on four million datasets, demonstrates the scheme's aim to support AI innovations that address specific industry needs, such as improving healthcare services.