AI and Big Data Innovation Forum 2019

The AI and Big Data Innovation Forum 2019 was coorganized by The Association of Cloud and Mobile Computing Professionals (ACMCP) and IVE on 1^st March 2019 in Cyberport.  HKSQ is one of supporting organizations.  Dr. Jacky Ting (Digital Service Lead, Greater China Region, Cognizant Technology Solutions) was one of speaker and he was also HKSQ copt member.  We took a photo in the entry for memory.

Dr. Daniel Yan (Assistant Executive Director, Vocational Training Council) gave a welcome speech.  He said technology development is much faster than course development.  We needed industry expert to induce up-to-date technology development into institute.  He told about technology ABCDI stands for AI, Block Chain, Cloud and Data (Big and Small), as well as, IoT.

Mr. Emil Chan (Chairman, The Association of Cloud and Mobile Computing Professionals) gave welcome remark. He said planning was not able to catch the change, thus AI & Big Data would be the useful technology to predict the change and its impact.  

Morning Session: IoT & Smart City

The first speaker was Mr. Thomas Cheung (張俊勇) (Deputy to The 13th National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China - 第十三屆港區全國人大代表) and his presentation entitled “To held the development opportunity of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Great Bay Area”.  Firstly, he reviewed some economy data of different cities in GBA.  

After that he briefed the position of four key cities in the GBA and they were Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.  At the end, he concluded that GBA should be further integrated to be more marketization and internationalization.

Group photo for the morning session.

The second speaker was Ir. Henry Cheung (Council member, Smart City Consortium; Managing Director, Kone Elevator (HK) Ltd.) and his talk named “24/7 equipment control and monitoring – application of IoT and Big Data”. 

Firstly, he briefed two megatrends that would impact our business environment and they were “Urbanization” and “Technological Disruption”.  Then he briefed the digitalization of elevator and escalator industry.

After that Mr. Cheung showed a video to demonstrate the future homecoming scenario.  Residential flow aimed to solve problems with accessibility, missed deliveries and weak communication.

The third speaker was Mr. Chris Tam (Senior Vice President, Business Development, The HK & China Gas Co. Ltd.) and his topic presented was “Cloud AICC solution”.  AICC stands for Artificial Intelligent Call Center in which employed AI with Big Data for customer service office to shorten waiting time and provide accurate answer.  

The third speaker was Mr. Chris Tam (Senior Vice President, Business Development, The HK & China Gas Co. Ltd.) and his topic presented was “Cloud AICC solution”.  AICC stands for Artificial Intelligent Call Center in which employed AI with Big Data for customer service office to shorten waiting time and provide accurate answer. 

Mr. Tam briefed their problem and challenges such as no idea of customer’s needs, 5 mins per call, inefficient and inflexible job allocation.  Using AI and Big Data, it would enhance CSO person-person interaction through quality suggested answer, suggested promotion technique and 360 degree customer information. Finally, Mr. Tam showed the benefit after implemented AICC that service capacity increased 2.5 times and waiting time reduced also 2.5 times. 

The fourth speaker was Dr. Jacky Ting (Digital Service Lead, Greater China Region, Cognizant Technology Solutions) and his presentation topic was “A New Era of Customer Engagement in the Future of Stores’. He said customer experience would be expected to overtake both price and product as a Key Brand Differentiator by 2020.  

Then Dr. Ting briefed shoppers wanted unique shopping experience, relevant content and value for money. He mentioned their ME-centric approach for customer engagement that separated “Think” (about logical persuasion) and “Feel” (about relevance). 

Lastly, Dr. Ting summarized his talk included design principle, overarching themes, three key areas of focus and content types.

The last speaker in the morning session was Mr. Patrick Chan (Solutions Architect, Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong & Macau) and his topic entitled “Building Smart Cities with Data Technology (DT)”.  In the beginning, he quoted Jack Ma (Founder, Alibaba Group) statement that “China is progressing from an Information Technology (IT) era to a period that favors Data Technology (DT)”. 

Mr. Chan briefed the DT economy ecosystem included traffic, industry, security, environment, health care and government.  The he also mentioned DT driven Alibaba Economy Ecosystem focused on Cloud + Big Data Capabilities + AI. 

And then he introduced Alibaba Cloud ET Brain for Verticals. ET Brain drives intelligence development for industry video was demonstrated (In Cantonese).

After that he stated ET City Brain implemented in Hangzhou (2016.10), Suzhou (2017.02), Quzhou (2017.05), Macau (2017.08) and Kuala Lumpur (2018.01).  The video in Macau was also demonstrated (阿里雲技術促進澳門轉型全新智慧城市).

At the end, Mr. Chan concluded City Brain Principles in which included IT Service Platform, AI Service Platform, Data Resource Platform and Integrated Computing Platform.  Their machine learning Platform for AI (PAI) was showed as follow diagram.

During the break, I took a photo with speakers and friends.

Photo with Mr. Patrick Chan

Photo with Mr. Harry Chan (Founder, BeeInventor Limited), who is HKSTP incubatee.

(Left: Dr. Jacky Ting, Mr. Jackie Wong (ACMCP), Dr. Peter Ip (Chairman, AI Bloc kchain Organization), Ms. Lorraine Lau (Head of Application Development, Regional Capability, PCCW Solutions) and I)

Afternoon Session: FinTech & AI

Mr. Emil Chan (Chairman, ACMCP) was the sixth speaker and his presentation topic entitled “The Challenges and the Opportunities of Hong Kong”.  He reviewed Hong Kong development history from Trade Port and its infrastructure. But he found that our infrastructure was very old without upgrade such as Container Port. FinTech and Smart City was located in our opposite side “Shenzhen”.

Then he mentioned the TechEra included Big Data (Volume, Variety and Velocity), AI, Blockchain and IoT, etc. Those technologies like Quartet.  

After that he quoted different technologies had already implemented in Shenzhen but Hong Kong still used very old concept!  Finally, he stated “Data is the New Oil”.  

Mr. Victor Li (Head of Department of Interdisciplinary Programmes, IVE, VTC) was the seventh speaker and his topic named “The Future of Vocational Education in the Age of AI & Big Data”. 

Firstly, he showed the video to mention the future of work.

Then Mr. Li did the real time survey with audiences with the question “Technologies likely to be adopted by companies?” It was found that Big data and AI was topic two.

Finally, Mr. Li identified future work skills included Personal Skills, People Skills, Applied Knowledge and Workplace Skills.  He introduced their Interdisciplinary programmes to match this requirement. 

Dr. Peter Ip (Chairman, AI Bloc kchain Organization) was the eighth speaker and his presentation title was “Success Business”.  He introduced his background included AI, Big Data, Blockchain & Financial Engineering.  

Then he briefed AI in Virtual Banking and briefed why to use Blockchain for Decentralized Exchange.  And then Dr. Ip used video “Oober Wallet” to explain a decentralized exchange ecosystem powered by AI + Blockchain. 

 After that Dr. Ip introduced AI & Big Data Video Analytics in different projects such as HK government smart traffic, facial recognition & features extraction, crowd & queue management, people counting, etc.

Mr. Matthew Ng (Senior VP, Innovation & Ecosystems, DBS HK; FinTech Committee Member, The Hong Kong Institue of Bankers) was the ninth speaker and his presentation was “FinTech Development of a bank in Hong Kong”.  In the beginning, he quoted Bill Gates statement that “Banking is necessary, banks are not.”   He also quoted their CEO Plyush Gupta that “In the digital era, comsumers’ ability to access information and make choices has changed dramatically, and new technologies are revolutionizing our way of life. To remain relevant, we need to continuously innovate.”

Then Mr. Ng introduced DBS Digital Transformation Journey included to embrace the Digital World, Customer Journey and to create a 26,000 Person start-up. DBS had 26000 staff and would like them to be startup thinking (Startup-ish Solution). They built a dedicated FinTech workspace by transforming a 5000 sq ft prime office space in Wanchai since 2015.  In here, 17 startups were selected to join DBS Accelerator under the open theme approach.

Finally, Mr. Ng introduced their journey towards being fully customer-centric and they employed Big Data in 2018.  The 4Ds Framework was briefed as Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver.  They aimed to embedding the banking function into what people want to achieve their lives.  

Mr. Greg Wong (Head of COE, Leonardo and Analytics, Greater China, SAP Hong Kong Co. Ltd.) was the tenth speaker and his topic named “Modern Analytics that empower users with ML/AI Game Changer”. In the beginning, he told us many people didn’t know what different between ML and AI.  It didn’t matter because top management / CEO didn’t interest in technical but they interested in the outcoming to be an AI company.  

Then Mr. Wong mentioned SAP Predictive Analytics implemented after acquisition of the company “KXEN” in 2013.  And then he introduced their predictive power (KI).

Lastly, he summarized to solve business problems quickly and deliver predictive intelligence through accelerating your analytics, delivery of contextual insight through unlock your company’s data.

The last speaker was Mr. Charles Lam (Senior Manager, FinTech & Blockchain Cluster, Cyberport) and his talk named “Cyberport: Asia’s FinTech & AI Hub”.  He shared their vision that Cyberport aspires to be the hub for digital technology, creating a key economic driver for Hong Kong.

Mr. Charles Lam then briefed their deep-dive on cluster development framework.  They had three strategic focus included Cultivate & Develop Talents, Drive Industry Development, and Integrate Traditional & New Economy.

Lastly, he shared Cyberport Global FinTech Ecosystem.

Before the end of Forum, Mr. Kan Chung Yeung (ACMCP) gave closing address.  He questioned “What’s our future with AI?”  He predicted our environment from Information (1980’s) to Value (2010’s) to Intelligence (2050’s).  He said Smart Network to be IoT + Blockchain + Big Data + AI.  In future, we needed Soft skills + People skills + Business skills. 

Group photo in the afternoon session.

Reference:

ACMCP - http://www.acmcp.org/

HKSQ - http://www.hksq.org/