Friday Beyond Spotlights – Professor Guo Yike: AI The Next Frontier

Friday Beyond Spotlights, an informative yet light-hearted talk show airing tonight on the Hong Kong International Business Channel (#76), is where prominent guests share their insights into current affairs, business, innovation and culture, as well as their ingenuity, passion and grit which forge their Lion Rock Spirit. The program is hosted by businessman and philanthropist Patrick Tsang On-yip, lawyer and lawmaker Nick Chan Hiu-fung, and seasoned business maverick Herman Hu Shao-ming.

Hosted by Nick Chan, episode 13 of Season 2 presents Professor Guo Yike, the new provost of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Prof Guo has spent 33 years at the Imperial College London, where he founded the Data Science Institute, with his research area focusing on AI and data mining for large-scale scientific applications.

As ChatGPT has gone viral recently, there is increasingly concern that fast-growing artificial intelligence (AI) programs are getting out of control and AI is surpassing human intelligence. As a world-renowned expert in the field, Prof Guo believes AI is one of the most amazing human technical advances in our human civilisation, and is definitely something good and not evil. He envisions that in the future, human intelligence and machine intelligence can communicate, appreciate and enjoy each other.

The rapid advancement of AI in art is another amazing development, according to Prof Guo. “As we are now touching the point of human creativity, we want the machine not only to mimic, but also to create.” He shows audiences a portrait of Deng Xiaoping with the Victoria Harbour on the background, which is the world’s first portrait of the former Chinese leader created and printed by a machine.

Prof Guo says the portrait also has special significance to him because Deng is the person who has changed his life. “When I graduated from middle school in 1978, China just started to reform. Deng did one thing which changed the whole fate of our generation, which is to resume university education that was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. Then I had a chance to enter the Tsinghua University to receive the best education.”

During his PhD at Tsinghua University, Prof Guo was sent by the university to study at the Imperial College London. “At that time, the gap between China and the UK in scientific development and education was huge, and I only had very limited time to catch up. During the first term of my studies, I usually go to my office at 7:30am and get back at around 11:00pm. One day, I left my office early at 4:30pm to pick up something; I saw the sunshine and suddenly realised that I haven’t seen the sunshine for seven months! You may call this hard work, or the Lion Rock Spirt of overcoming any difficulties.”

Prof Guo says Hong Kong’s young generation are extremely fortunate because they are in a world-leading international city that is fully integrated with the world. He believes Hong Kong has a bright future and will be the best international metropolitan city in five years’ time.

To find out more, watch Season 2, Episode 13 of Friday Beyond Spotlights tonight at 8:30pm on the HKIBC channel (#76).

Watch the trailer of Episode 13 on https://youtu.be/j_BFgWbHFnA