Paul Chan, financial secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government, said on Sunday that Hong Kong is pushing ahead with promoting the development of artificial intelligence (AI), aiming to empower industries, enhance economic competitiveness and bring tangible convenience to people.

Chan hoped to create more new highlights of development through advancing AI. In his blog, he noted that the Sandy Ridge Data Facility Cluster site is under construction and expected to deliver 180,000 peta-floating point operations per second (PFlops) by 2032, which is 36 times the current capacity.

In addition, the Artificial Intelligence Subsidy Scheme has already approved more than 30 projects, covering areas such as large language models, medical AI models, and embodied intelligence.

Chan said that through collaboration among government, industry, academia, research, and investment, Hong Kong is attracting more top international AI talent to use the city as a base for research, exchange, and entrepreneurship.

He said that the committee on AI+ and Industry Development Strategy has been successfully formed and will hold its first meeting soon. At the same time, under the notion of "AI training for all," 50 million HK dollars (about 6.38 million U.S. dollars) has been allocated to organize more than 200 events over the next two fiscal years, benefiting an estimated 50,000 participants.

He also said that 300 million HK dollars will be allocated this year to enhance the Digital Transformation Support Pilot Program, focusing on helping small and medium-sized enterprises adopt readily available AI and cybersecurity solutions to forecast consumer trends, optimize marketing, and automate daily operations.