Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung today led officials from the Civil Service Bureau (CSB) and the Digital Policy Office (DPO) on a duty visit to Shenzhen together with a delegation of the Legislative Council Panel on Public Service.

They went to learn about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by relevant local organisations to assist in handling government administrative work.

The officials first visited the Government Services & Data Management Bureau of the Shenzhen Municipality in Futian District to learn about the introduction and application of "AI digital employees".

They also stopped by the Shenzhen Government Service Center to learn about the hotline 12345 and its technological application, then toured the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court and an innovation and technology company to learn how the AI-Enhanced Adjudication Assisting System is used and how AI assists in enhancing legal services respectively.

Mrs Yeung said that with the assistance of the DPO, the CSB endeavours to drive the adoption of management measures and digitalisation among bureaus and departments to reprioritise and reorganise their work, capitalise on technological solutions and streamline work processes, thereby not only enhancing work efficiency and providing convenience to the public but also optimising the use of civil service manpower resources.

The departments are actively promoting e-government services and AI, and many of them have successfully developed their own AI systems for data processing, statistics, traffic management and environmental detection, and more. They also use big data to analyse weather data, and the kiosks for self-service applications have been well received by the public.

HKPilot, a large language model version of a generative AI document processing copilot application self-developed by the Hong Kong Generative AI Research & Development Center (HKGAI) established under the InnoHK research clusters, is currently being piloted within the Government. It helps reduce the manpower required for handling general document processing tasks in the longer term.

The HKGAI will also develop a number of applications for different areas of public affairs, such as the legal-related "LexiHK", to further integrate the application of generative AI into government affairs.