News & Stories

Ever since computer science pioneer, Alan Turing, first asked “can machines think?” back in the 1940s, humanity’s concerns about machines capable of acquiring the knowledge it needed to evolve have never faded. With potential applications for Artificial Intelligence (AI) now growing at a near exponential rate, how are we humans coping with the technology’s uncertainties?  A renowned expert in the field of ethical use of AI, Prof. Pascale FUNG here sheds some light on the technology’s many benefits and risks. Her biggest concern is people’s ignorance about AI means we may be doing a disservice to both ourselves and AI. AI creates rather than eliminates jobs

The notable woman engineer reveals how she developed an interest in engineering as a kid, and what drove her to become an engineer in a male-denominated field.

Research shows growing need for sustainability focus in Belt and Road Initiative projects in ASEAN. Chinese companies see diverse strengths of ASEAN market and collaboration the key for success.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 is a global public health challenge. To prevent the escalation of its transmission, China locked down one-third of its cities and strictly restricted personal mobility and economic activities. Using timely and comprehensive air quality data in China, we show that these counter-COVID-19 measures led to a remarkable improvement in air quality. Within weeks, the Air Quality Index and PM2.5 concentrations were brought down by 25%. The effects are larger in colder, richer, and more industrialized cities. We estimate that such improvement would avert 24,000 to 36,000 premature deaths from air pollution on a monthly basis.

President Prof. Wei SHYY contributed an article to the World Economic Forum talking about the collaborative efforts made by HKUST and its fellow allies to fight Covid-19. Below is the full article. With the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) sweeping across continents and affecting many millions, health authorities, policy-makers and scientists, innovators around the world are racing to invent ways to contain the further spread of the virus. It is our unwavering belief that universities are – and should always be – contributing to this collective fight against this and future severe and potentially long-lasting public health crises.

HKUST IEMS Thought Leadership Briefs No. 36

The United States maintains it has the upper hand being the bigger "buyer" in the relationship, while the Chinese argue the goods of lower costs it exports are doing a big favor to US consumers, who would ultimately suffer if the costs of such goods continue to rise because of tariffs. While China is busy fighting the trade war externally, Beijing is concurrently trying to improve the efficiency of the economy to make it more robust and resilient in such difficult times. An often-overlooked feature of Sino-US trade imbalances is that although Beijing runs up huge trade surpluses in the manufacturing sector, it has large deficits in the service sector. These supply and demand mismatches suggest that there may exist inefficient misallocations in the Chinese economy. Economic efficiency is achieved when factors of production in an economy are distributed or allocated to most productive firms or sectors with the highest demand.

In today’s workplace where many employers favor technical know-how over emotional aptitude, soft skills seem to be less desirable but for Professor Kellee TSAI, Dean of HKUST’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS), creativity is deemed to be an essential skill for the future of work. The world is moving toward automation at speed, today’s cutting edge technology and patents may become obsolete within years, while skills like critical thinking and creativity on the other hand, do not. At a time when AI and other forms of advanced machine learning are gaining prominence, it would be unwise for humans to only focus on mastering abilities that can be easily outsourced to computers, warns Prof. Tsai.