Universities should embrace the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in teaching if they want to survive, the president of Hong Kong’s oldest tertiary education institution has said, as he expects the sector to be reshaped in the coming decade.
Xiang Zhang from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) also said it would establish a school of government and public policy to attract young leaders to Hong Kong.
In an exclusive interview with the Post, Zhang said AI presented a huge opportunity and a challenge because universities could no longer simply feed students knowledge amid an “AI tsunami”.
“Now students have many other alternatives. They can have AI teachers from the internet who could be better than some of our teachers, so we’re going to compete with AI basically in terms of the avenue of acquiring knowledge,” he said.
“So can teachers be better equipped with AI tools so students can more easily absorb the materials and content?”
Zhang added that institutions would be left behind if they did not embrace change.
“Any universities doing the fast transition better are going to survive and thrive, and those keeping the old-fashioned way of teaching, if you just simply go to chalk and board, one day they may find it obsolete and students may turn away, as they can find other ways to [learn],” he said.
“To be ahead of the curve, we need to define the curve. AI is a perfect challenge, but an opportunity at the same time.”
He said higher education would be “reshaped in the next 10 years”.
“Whoever can act fast and position themselves in the right way, they will get ahead. We hope HKU will be the one,” Zhang said.
He said universities needed to have an edge by offering something more, such as interpersonal interaction, collaboration and guidance from teachers.
HKU will make an AI literacy course mandatory for all students regardless of their discipline starting from the 2025-26 academic year to equip them with foundational knowledge and skills, according to the university president.
Zhang added that the university provided students with free access to DeepSeek and ChatGPT, two main AI chatbots.
He said while AI could be seen as deepening technology competition among countries, AI technology also needed international collaboration to push it further to help solve people’s daily problems. Such efforts should not be affected by geopolitics, he said, citing robotics supported by AI to help the elderly live independently as an example.
“Climate change, human health, cancer, Covid, energy, water, food, these are all global challenges. Unfortunately, geopolitics, especially in some of the Western countries, try to withdraw the collaborations and so on. But these are a few areas where we could have a potential collaboration,” Zhang said.
“I think Hong Kong and HKU should help China to become a world leader in promoting international collaboration, addressing global challenges. And because these are the challenges that will affect everybody, if you don’t address that, we’ll see there’s two countries fighting for water in a war.”
He said HKU also wanted administrative staff to be familiar with the technology.
“That is actually the campuswide AI transformation,” Zhang said.
“So in a way, we want to use AI to connect different faculties and different disciplines … this is a very exciting time for us as educators and academics.”
Zhang said HKU would soon establish a school of government and public policy to nurture young talent. The move follows the recent launches of a school of computing and data science last July, a school of innovation last November and a school of biomedical engineering in March.
“Building the future leaders is important. Hong Kong is the best place to bring the East and the West cultures [together],” he said.
“We hope by taking advantage of ‘one country, two systems’, we can bring the world’s young leaders to come to Hong Kong to study and to make contributions … and develop our unique advantage in this arena.”