Datax co-founder and CEO Kevin Wong on the role of AI in human storytelling
In an era when everyone has heard of ChatGPT, many people are left wondering, or even fearing, whether artificial intelligence will take over the world. Hong Kong company Datax, though, showcases ways in which the power of AI can be harnessed for good, in the city and beyond.
From HKU to InnoPark
Datax was born at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 2017, the brainchild of Kevin Wong and his schoolmates, who worked with AI as research assistants. “We wanted to use AI to help people with repetitive or time-consuming tasks at work,” he says.
Wong’s Datax soon found a home within Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks’ (HKSTP) Tseung Kwan O InnoPark, which helped him share his technology and his vision outside the walls of his university. “Before we joined the InnoPark, HKSTP stood out to us due to their experience in nurturing start-ups and their partnerships team, people who were dedicated to helping us find potential clients,” Wong recalls. “HKSTP offered us an affordable workspace and subsidised us with researcher funding, which are the two most critical things for sustaining a technological start-up in Hong Kong.”
Speaking our language with AI
What started off as a start-up offering data management services to AI developers turned into so much more. Under Datax, Wong has also created Subanana, which offers AI-generated subtitles, translation and transcripts in more than 80 languages. Last October, he launched an advanced AI service that can convert spoken Cantonese to written Chinese, distinguishing Datax from other AI solution companies through this element of localisation.
“Hong Kong remains our key market, as Cantonese is a language that is hard to learn,” he says. “One of our users recorded a video of the moment he started using our technology. He was just staring at his screen at 2am, exclaiming how he will never have to pull an all-nighter for his job again. Watching that video made me so happy; nothing will compare to it.”
Through HKSTP events that help companies pitch their solutions to corporations, Datax introduced its optical character recognition (OCR) and speech-to-text solutions to various clients and government departments in Hong Kong. “We are exploring the application of generative AI in the city and training our own language model to do things ChatGPT does,” says Wong. “ChatGPT’s strengths do not lie in Chinese or Cantonese, so we are fine-tuning our technology to carry out tasks with a Hong Kong focus.”
Investing in the future
Of AI’s game-changing impact on the shape of our future, he says: “It is inevitable that some jobs will be replaced by AI; it's just a matter of time. I think what we should do now is to observe and heighten our awareness of the capabilities of AI and reflect on the difference between its strengths and ours as mankind. Only by doing so can we find our position in this world alongside AI and avoid developing something that is not to our advantage.”