Interest in Chat GPT is higher than anywhere else in the entire world. The problem? You can’t access it directly without a VPN. That will increasingly be an issue for international banks.
There was a time – about a year ago – when you could utter «generative artificial intelligence» out loud and it would elicit little more than a great big yawn. You would also likely be pigeonholed as a computer nerd.
Now AI and Chat GPT sit right up there in the great pantheon of Big Tech alongside the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Apple - leaving the once overhyped Metaverse and augmented reality in the dust.
Still, something funny happened along the way. It seems that interest in Chat GPT is higher in Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world, according to AIPRM.com, an AI-prompt management company.
Prompt Management
But there is a small catch. It isn’t directly available as a service without using a VPN.
While you get your head around the fact that there are already prompt management companies out there touting their wares, so to speak, AIPRM does provide more granular detail and figures.
They indicate there are 2,683 searches per million inhabitants a month in Hong Kong related to artificial intelligence. That is followed by Taiwan at 2,433 searches and Singapore at 2,328. The US, obviously fatigued by the hype around a sector that it had a very strong hand in creating, comes in at a measly 67th place.
No Explanation
AIPRM says AI searches are substantially related to ChatGPT, with the number of queries «far surpassing» any other tool in the AIPRM study.
There are no official explanations as to why the tool is not available in the city from the developer (OpenAI) or the government, even though tech insiders suggest you can use it freely by way of Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
In China, it has been consigned to the wrong side of the so-called digital iron curtain alongside Twitter, Google, and Facebook. The government has been somewhat less opaque about limiting its use on the mainland while formally approving a competitor, Baidu’s Ernie Bot, in September.
Many Use It
Whatever the case, and whether you are using a VPN or not, you can easily drive a truckload of Oculus headsets right into the very deep pothole that represents the current state of affairs in Hong Kong.
As any basic search query shows, local media report on it, the University of Hong Kong allows staff to use it, the government is studying it, and so on.
But there is another catch to all this. As finews.asia has extensively indicated this year, Chat GPT and generative AI tools are increasingly being implemented at international financial institutions.
When Google Was New
For the moment, the main thrust seems to be for client interfaces, something we commented on in October.
But we are likely at a similar point in the late 1990s and early 2000s when banks at first had relatively little use for search engines – or Google for that matter.
That situation had changed substantially by the mid-2000s and, in the meantime, they have become integral components of banking work in any number of control and business functions.
Critical Work
As one example, they are frequently employed as invaluable aids to formal adverse news requests, and as such they have become critical adjuncts to client due diligence and general financial crime work.
Bankers and external consultants in many different disciplines, from retail to commercial banking to wealth management, also use them to substantiate or question incoming alerts sent by internal teams prompted by new or relevant information related to ongoing client monitoring activities.
We could go on but that is not the important point here. The big question is – would Hong Kong’s financial center have remained as large and international as it is today if Google and other search engines weren’t freely available back then? It seems unlikely.
