A resident of the fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court housing estate in Tai Po has said homeowners ran into hitches registering for online information sessions scheduled later this month.

Hop On Management, which took over estate management duties after the owners’ corporation committee was dissolved in the wake of the fatal blaze, said in an SMS message to a resident on Sunday that he had not completed registration for an “update session” on May 20, two days after the firm initially confirmed his registration.

The management company – a subsidiary of real estate giant Chinachem Group – announced last week that it had scheduled two online sessions on May 12 and 20. Tuesday’s session will be the first time for Hop On to address residents collectively.

It will give updates on the firm’s work as well as the financial situation of the now-dissolved owners’ board and refund arrangements for the renovation works that were under way when the fire broke out in November.

According to a Hop On document shared with residents and seen by HKFP, the session is only intended to explain the current situation to Wang Fuk Court residents and answer any questions they may have. No voting procedures will take place.

Registration ‘not completed’

The resident, who declined to be identified, showed HKFP the text message he received from Hop On. It said: “You have not completed the registration procedures for the Wang Fuk Court owners update session. Therefore, we cannot confirm attendance arrangements.”

The resident said he registered for the first session when registration opened on Wednesday, days before the deadline on Sunday at 11.59pm.

Hop On confirmed his registration on Friday but told him on Sunday afternoon that his registration had not been completed.

As of Monday morning, the resident’s registration had not been confirmed.

He said that another resident told him of experiencing the same issue.

Since Hop On was appointed administrator of Wang Fuk Court in January, residents have called on the company to hold a general meeting with homeowners. A petition launched by a group of survivors collected 247 handwritten signatures, or some 12 per cent of all households at the estate.

Hong Kong’s Building Management Ordinance stipulates that a management committee must convene a general meeting at the written request of at least five per cent of owners.

The Home Affairs Department earlier alleged that a similar petition, conducted online, could have contained fraudulent signatures.

The Tai Po fire broke out on November 26, claiming 168 lives and burning the homes of thousands. The blaze is Hong Kong’s deadliest since 1948.

A Hong Kong basketball coach has been released on bail after he was arrested for allegedly slapping a student on a school court, an incident captured in a viral online video.

Yung Kam-wah was released early Tuesday morning, TVB reported.

The 54-year-old was arrested on Monday on suspicion of common assault after an online video showed a basketball coach forcing a student to slap himself several times.

The incident allegedly happened at Hon Wah College, a secondary school in Siu Sai Wan, independent local media Create City Stories reported last week.

Hon Wah College issued a statement last Tuesday, saying that the incident took place at the school during the 2023-24 academic year, Cable TV reported.

The school added that it had contacted the student to provide support and had suspended Yung from coaching duties.

On the same day, Yung issued an apology on Facebook.

“I want to express my deepest apologies to the student in the video. No matter what rules were broken, what mistakes were made, or what the circumstances were, I should never have punished a student this way,” Yung wrote in a Chinese-language statement.

“I realise that this caused him distress and hurt him, and I sincerely apologise.”

Local media also reported that Hon Wah College students said Yung had been abusive toward pupils for a long time.

“Our generation needs education of love. Under harsh education, students will just want to give up. Our school basketball team used to do well. However, I saw many friends, who were members of the basketball team, quit the team over the past few years because they could not stand the harsh education there,” a student told reporters in Cantonese.

Yung, a former player for the Hong Kong men’s national basketball team, currently serves as the vice chairman of the Hong Kong Basketball Association and works as a sports commentator.

Hongkong Post has applied to the legislature for a HK$4.6 billion government bailout to support its operations over the next three years and to cover the refurbishment of the Air Mail Centre.

According to a paper submitted by the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau to the Legislative Council (LegCo) Panel on Economic Development on Wednesday, Hongkong Post suffered a HK$821 million loss in the 2024-25 financial year.

It was a record high loss since Hongkong Post began to operate a self-financing model in 1995.

The LegCo panel is set to discuss the bailout application on Tuesday next week.

Hongkong Post has seen a shrinking mail volume since 2019, according to the paper. The mail volume it handled “decreased by an average rate of about 7% per year from 2019-20 to 2024-25 with a cumulative drop of 44%, which is expected to continue or even worsen in the years to come.”

The postal service attributed the drop to the geopolitical situation, the increasing popularity of electronic communication, and the rising number of competitors.

The HK$4.6 billion bailout will also cover the HK$510 million renovation of the Air Mail Centre at Hong Kong International Airport.

In 2021, the LegCo Finance Committee (FC) approved more than HK$4.61 billion to redevelop the ageing Air Mail Centre.

However, the government called off the redevelopment project last year, citing a projected drop in airmail volumes in the coming years.

According to the paper, Hongkong Post has instead proposed a “more cost-effective” plan, which includes refurbishing the 28-year-old Air Mail Centre.

A Hong Kong couple have been arrested for child neglect after refusing to allow their baby boy, who was born without any medical record, to undergo a DNA test for birth registration.

Security minister Chris Tang told journalists on Tuesday afternoon that the couple, who said they were the parents of an infant named Danny, had been arrested in Cheung Sha Wan while the infant was sent to hospital for a health check.

Tang said the couple could not provide any medical records of the pregnancy or even a photo of the pregnancy to prove their parental relationship with the infant.

The baby had not had any medical check-ups since birth, which clearly constitutes child neglect, the security chief added.

The couple – identified by local media as Mr Tsang and Ms Kwan – caught widespread attention after they said online that the Swedish government had taken custody of their daughter, Lily, in 2023.

Saying they have not met their daughter since, the couple posted on their “Save Lily” Threads and Facebook accounts, appealing for the girl’s return to Hong Kong.

The couple said they practised “free births” and their baby boy was born in Hong Kong around two months ago.

Free birth, also called unassisted birth, involves a conscious decision to undergo pregnancy and give birth without professional maternity care or medical intervention. The trend has put the lives of mothers and babies at grave risk.

According to local media, the couple’s eldest daughter was born at home in Finland but died in infancy, and the Swedish government removed the second child, Lily, from their care due to health conditions.

In a written response to HK01, Linköping municipality in Sweden said that while it could not comment on a specific case, authorities would only apply to the court for a care order if the situation of a child was so severe that further protection was required and voluntary services were no longer sufficient to prevent harm to the child’s health or physical and mental development.

The infant Danny is yet to be registered in Hong Kong, although parents must register the birth of a newborn within 42 days of delivery. According to the Births and Deaths Registration Ordinance, it is a criminal offence for anyone to deliberately fail to register the birth of a child.

Speaking on Commercial Radio on Tuesday morning, Mr Tsang said he tried to register Danny’s birth within 42 days of delivery, but he did not want to submit DNA samples to authorities to verify the relationship between the couple and Danny.

Welfare minister Chris Sun told the press on Tuesday morning that authorities were aware of the case, but social workers could not find the couple after multiple attempts to visit them.

“We had been trying to contact the parents and family through various means since last Thursday. This included social workers making daily home visits – even waiting until nearly midnight on one occasion. We also tried to locate them at different times during the morning and afternoon, and left various contact details,” Sun said in Cantonese. “However, we were unable to reach them last week.”

Sun said social workers “established contact” with the couple only on Monday and tried to arrange a meeting with them.

The Hong Kong government has proposed allocating up to 180 “reserve units” of transitional housing to tenants evicted due to the “shoebox” flat reform.

Victor Tai, undersecretary for housing, said on Monday that the reserve units would only be provided under “very exceptional circumstances,” such as tenants evicted by landlords of subdivided flats and those in urgent need of housing.

The reserve units will only come from transitional housing projects in urban or “extended urban” areas, such as Tung Chung, Sha Tin and Tseung Kwan O, according to a policy briefing submitted by the Housing Bureau to the Legislative Council’s (LegCo) panel on housing.

Speaking at the panel, Tai said the units would only be reserved for three months. If the units were not allocated to anyone, they would become available again for other transitional housing applicants.

“Our aim is to have some reserve units in urban and extended urban areas ready for providing immediate support,” Tai said in Cantonese.

Elaine Chik, a lawmaker from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), raised concern that the 180 reserve units may fail to meet demand.

In response, Tai said many current tenants of subdivided units were themselves applicants for public or transitional housing, and that the amount of reserve units should be enough for those in urgent need of temporary shelter.

According to the briefing paper, those who wish to move into the reserve units must undergo a review by one of the six government-appointed District Service Teams “to verify their imminent housing needs.”

Another Housing Bureau team will review the applications before allocating the units for a three-month tenancy.

The policy is expected to come into force next month.

Hong Kong passed the Basic Housing Units Ordinance in September, mandating landlords of subdivided units to meet government-set living standards. These include a floor space of at least 86 square feet, a ceiling height of 2.3 metres, as well as windows and an individual toilet.

The law, which came into effect in March, also requires landlords to register their units if they want to continue leasing them legally.

Authorities estimate that more than 220,000 people in the city live in “shoebox” flats, around one-third of which need major renovation.

According to the Housing Bureau, as of April 2026, there were 19,100 transitional housing units operated by NGOs and subsidised by the government.

By Sringatin & MICROLAB

MICROLAB Collective’s latest book, What We Carry, Under the Same Sky, features essays, poems, photographs and drawings by Indonesian migrant workers, reflecting on their life journeys from their home villages in Indonesia to Hong Kong.

This collaborative effort involved not only migrant workers but also academics who helped sharpen their writing, as well as artists who guided the process and helped design the book’s layout.

Their stories represent the journeys of hundreds of thousands of domestic workers in Hong Kong and beyond.

The shared collective emotion begins in Chapter One. Despite living in resource-rich Indonesia, the authors describe facing economic difficulties due to the country’s broken system. “It is true, our country is rich, yet we do not live in prosperity,” they write.

Each chapter touches upon the invisible burdens faced by migrant workers, such as long-distance motherhood and structural isolation. It opens with an essay, followed by photos taken by migrant workers. The pictures are their personal reflections of what they have “carried,” metaphorically and literally, from Indonesia to Hong Kong, during work and on their days off.

The photos are accompanied by captions that describe the burdens of their lives, worries, and hopes as migrant workers.

A poignant example is in Chapter Two. A migrant worker uses a photo of suitcases in front of airport check-in counters to express loneliness, longing and determination. “Leaving behind family, children, parents – we store our feelings of longing, pain, discrimination in a suitcase of sincerity,” she wrote.

The stories shared by 15 women in the book can easily be experienced by many other migrant workers. This could be seen during the book launch on International Women’s Day on March 8.

The authors drew much laughter when they told the audience about experiencing miscommunications and misunderstandings when they first came to Hong Kong. For example, they mistook the Cantonese word “tang” for “chair,” whereas the employer meant “wait” or “lamp.” The writers turned to humour to ease the daily struggles and sadness they may experience.

Reading What We Carry, Under the Same Sky is like watching a TV drama. It begins with reflections on their home country, then continues with the challenges they face overseas, personal moments with friends on their days off, and ends with their dreams and aspirations.

The book also captures the bitter reality of a cycle of exploitation. Even though Hong Kong and Indonesian laws are said to protect migrant workers, they fail to change the fundamental well-being and status of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong.

The laws and regulations often contrast with the realities faced by migrant domestic workers. While smartphone technology makes it easier for migrant workers to communicate and send money home, their living conditions remain the same.

The mandatory live-in policy forces migrant domestic workers to live with their employers.  It is not uncommon for them to sleep in the kitchen, in the bathroom, or in a coffin-sized compartment. There is no legal limit to their working hours, and many work for over 12 hours a day and are on call 24/7.

The rules often become a trap. The two-week immigration rule for migrant workers forces them to leave Hong Kong within 14 days after their contract is terminated. As a result, many workers are afraid to report abuse for fear of being immediately deported and losing their livelihood.

There is a statutory monthly minimum wage for migrant domestic workers, but in reality, their hourly wage is far below that of other Hong Kong workers and has not kept pace with the high cost of living and inflation.

Indonesia also prohibits employment agencies from charging migrant workers placement fees, while Hong Kong only allows agencies to deduct at most 10 per cent from workers’ first-month salaries. But in practice, some workers have to spend their entire wages for four to five months to pay agencies HK$ 20,000 to HK$25,000 in placement fees.

The language used by the governments often contrasts with reality.

The Hong Kong government still calls migrant workers “foreign domestic helpers” – a term that minimises their contribution as “help” rather than work. “Helper” erases the importance of the labour of migrant domestic workers and their significant contribution to Hong Kong’s economy and the households that employ them.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian government praises migrant domestic workers as “remittance heroes.” However, for many workers, it covers up the reality of being treated as commodities.

What We Carry, Under the Same Sky reveals that behind those beautiful terms and high-rise buildings in Hong Kong, these migrant women carry burdens, sweat and tears. Their stories are repeated and remain the same from year to year, decade to decade.

On International Domestic Workers Day, which falls on June 16, we encourage people and governments in Hong Kong and Indonesia to appreciate and celebrate the deep commitment of migrant domestic workers who leave their own families to take care of other families.

While this is a mutually beneficial relationship, migrant workers deserve deep appreciation, respect, and understanding of their rights, sacrifices, and struggles.

Without migrant domestic workers, employers will find it impossible to have both a career and take care of their children and elderly parents.

The responsibility of looking after others’ children, parents and home has been borne by invisible workers, often called “maids,” “servants,” or “helpers.” Yet they are more. They are workers who deserve respect, as well as fair and just treatment.

Sringatin is an Indonesian migrant domestic worker and labour activist in Hong Kong. She is the secretary of the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union (IMWU) and spokesperson for the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body (AMCB). In 2014, she was named by the South China Morning Post as one of the Top 10 Local Heroes.

MICROLAB is a shared space to cultivate collaboration between grassroots migrants, academics, artists and service providers hosted in the Department of English and Communication at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. It is collaboratively run by the Network of Indonesian Migrant Workers (JBMI) leaders Sringatin and Jepy, Professor Lydia Catedral, Francis Catedral, Yvonne Zhu and Yuyan Liang.

Hong Kong lawmaker Judy Chan has received a written warning from the Legislative Council (LegCo) over her January traffic offence, the lowest-level sanction under a new code of conduct introduced earlier this year.

The Legislative Council Supervisory Committee submitted a report to LegCo on Wednesday detailing its investigation into a complaint relating to Chan’s driving.

The New People’s Party lawmaker was caught driving against traffic on Jaffe Road in Wan Chai on January 23. Four days later, the supervisory committee received a formal complaint from a member of the public.

In March, Chan was fined HK$2,000 and banned from driving for one month after pleading guilty to one count of careless driving.

“Taking into account all relevant factors, the Committee has unanimously
concluded that [Chan’s] misconduct did not reach a serious level,” the committee said in the report.

The committee therefore issued a written warning to the lawmaker, urging Chan to be “mindful of her words and deeds at all times and ensure that she lives up to the public’s expectations.”

Chan said on Facebook on Wednesday night that she accepted the committee’s decision. She also issued another apology.

“I will treat this as a lesson to remain vigilant, strive for continuous improvement, and do my utmost to serve the public,” Chan said in the Chinese-language post.

“I would like to express my sincere apologies to the public once again, especially to those who were disappointed or concerned by this incident.”

New code of conduct

In January, the LegCo introduced a new code of conduct for lawmakers that specifies requirements for meeting attendance, voting, and other duties.

It also introduced tougher penalties for misconduct under a five-tier sanctions system. The punishments for misconduct range from a written warning – the lowest-level sanctions – to suspension of duty and deduction of lawmakers’ remuneration and allowances.

The code ensures that lawmakers “perform their duties in a constructive manner” and do “not intentionally vilify the governance credibility” of authorities, according to the LegCo.

Misconduct complaints are handled by the newly created Legislative Council Supervisory Committee, which includes 13 lawmakers. The committee is an expansion of the former Committee on Members’ Interests.

Hong Kong restaurants with an area larger than 20 square metres can start applying for licences to allow dogs in their premises from May 18, the government has announced.

The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said in a statement on Thursday that it would accept applications from May 18 to June 8.

The department is set to approve the first batch of applications in mid-June, with dogs to be allowed in restaurants in July.

The statement said that “the FEHD will specify a date in July from which dogs will be allowed to enter permitted food premises.”

While the Food Business (Amendment) Regulation 2026 came into effect on Friday, the FEHD reminded the public that “restaurants must first submit an application and obtain approval before allowing dogs to enter.”

Hotpot and barbecue restaurants are not eligible to apply for the permits, the government said, citing safety concerns.

The FEHD will hold briefing sessions for restaurant operators from Monday to Wednesday next week, as well as on May 28.

The department said it would publish a list of dog-friendly restaurants once the first batch of permits is approved.

The government said in February that it would issue 500-1,000 dog-friendly permits to local eateries in mid-June.

Hong Kong leader John Lee announced the plan to relax an outdated policy banning dogs in restaurants in his 2025 Policy Address in September.

The announcement to update the decades-old Food Business Regulation came after a pet-friendly restaurant in Tai Po had to suspend operations for seven days in January last year for allowing dogs inside.

Hong Kong police have launched a two-week campaign to clamp down on jaywalking and inattentive driving following a surge in fatal traffic accidents over the first five months of this year.

Police said on Friday that two law enforcement operations, codenamed “Clearview” and “Autobinder,” would run until June 19, targeting careless driving and reckless road crossing.

“As of May 31 this year, the number of deaths from traffic accidents in Hong Kong reached 51, up 42 per cent from the same period last year,” police said in a Chinese-language media briefing. “Pedestrian deaths accounted for half of the total.”

See also: Hong Kong taxi driver in court over Ngau Tau Kok crash that killed 2

Police said an analysis showed that the primary causes of the high death toll were jaywalking and careless driving, with commercial vehicles identified as the most frequent vehicle type involved in fatal incidents.

During the operations, the police force will strengthen patrols using unmarked police vehicles, conducting strict enforcement against speeding, tailgating, using mobile phones while driving, and other forms of careless driving.

Police urged professional drivers to stay focused behind the wheel and adhere to traffic rules, and called on pedestrians to avoid jaywalking, weaving through traffic or ignoring traffic signals.

Pedestrians should utilise designated pedestrian crossings, subways and footbridges, police added.

The maximum penalty for careless driving in Hong Kong is a HK$5,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment. Jaywalking carries a fine of up to HK$2,000.

Hong Kong scholar Joseph Li has had to rethink the design of his courses almost every semester over the past few years, as powerful AI chatbots disrupt how teachers teach and students learn.

His discipline – an emerging academic field called “public humanities,” which integrates cultural theories with a focus on community-building – is novel enough to require constant revision of its curriculum.

But the sheer speed at which artificial intelligence has evolved since November 2022 – when OpenAI released its powerful ChatGPT, kicking off an AI frenzy – has necessitated a more radical reimagining of higher education, Li said.

For example, with AI, writing essays has become less meaningful as a form of assessment, as the technology can generate prose “within seconds,” Li, a research assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), told HKFP in an interview in April.

Now, a course needs to incorporate several grading methods, including in-class handwritten tests, to fully assess students, he said.

The point is not to ban students from using AI, as Li himself allows students to freely use the technology in some settings.

“The logic is to make all these assignments interconnected and accumulative, so that [students] cannot instantly generate something” for the sake of handing in their homework, he said in Cantonese.

Across academic disciplines, professors and lecturers in Hong Kong are rethinking their teaching and the ways they assess students’ learning outcomes. The goal is to cultivate what scholars call “AI literacy” – a responsible and constructive approach to using the emerging technology in the real world.

“When [students] graduate, it is certain that they will be exposed to AI and they will use AI,” George Ho, an associate professor of supply chain and information management at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong (HSU), told HKFP in Cantonese.

“What we need to do is to ensure they use it ethically, use it well, and acquire the necessary skills to master the technology,” Ho said.

The process is both fruitful and challenging, according to teaching academics and experts interviewed by HKFP. While generative AI has unleashed massive potential for innovative teaching and greatly accelerated students’ learning, the technology also raises questions about fairness and academic integrity.

From ban to embrace

Kelvin Wan, a digital learning specialist at HSU, recalled that when the AI boom began in late 2022, universities in Hong Kong were cautious about the technology and its implications for education.

That anxiety was demonstrated when the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the city’s oldest university, issued a temporary ban on AI tools for coursework in February 2023. HKU lifted the ban in the summer of that year and gave its teachers and students access to ChatGPT in September 2023.

Cecilia Chan, a professor of education at HKU, who leads the university’s AI in Education Lab, told media outlet The Initium in 2024 that the temporary AI ban was implemented to give school management time to acquire the hardware, software, and knowledge required to apply the nascent technology in education.

HKU has since fully embraced generative AI. In its AI policy, rolled out in the 2023-24 academic year, the university stated that “AI literacy is essential,” and that “rethinking pedagogy is most likely necessary.”

“Universities in Hong Kong were in fact watching each other at that time,” Wan told HKFP in Cantonese. “So we were pretty cautious at the beginning… But, from our perspective, we wanted to know what [AI] is.”

In May 2023, HSU organised a seminar on the pros and cons of using AI in higher education, as well as the ethical issues arising from the technology. Teachers were positive about the discussion, and the school began drafting guidelines for the use of AI for both staff and students, Wan recalled.

At HSU, the school encourages teachers to openly communicate with students about where they are allowed to use AI for assignments from the start of the semester, Wan said.

Meanwhile, the school also provides guidance for students to responsibly report their use of AI to teachers. “This hopefully will safeguard their academic integrity,” Wan said.

Ho, the supply chain professor at HSU, said his students were trained in skills to use AI, including systems thinking – the ability to break down a complex problem into solvable parts – and critical thinking – being able to evaluate the information generated by AI.

Wan called those “transferable skills,” meaning they are valid in various real-world scenarios, not just for using AI. “No matter how advanced AI becomes in the future, we as humans have to evaluate its outputs and make our own judgements,” he said.

Ultimately, students have to be responsible for their use of AI, Wan said. “AI is fundamentally a tool, and it cannot take responsibility… Whoever uses AI has the responsibility to criticise and evaluate its outputs.”

Subjects at risk

As AI takes root in classrooms, it appears to be a promising tool for teachers and students alike.

Tang Yuk-ming, a senior lecturer at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has studied the impact of advanced information technologies on students’ learning outcomes and efficacy.

His research during the Covid-19 pandemic, when online learning was the predominant mode of higher education due to social distancing rules, found that virtual reality (VR) could improve students’ academic performance and motivation to learn.

AI chatbots can enable teachers and students to “personalise learning,” said Tang, whose research focus also includes the application of AI.

As the digital assistant is available 24 hours a day, students can get instant responses tailored to their needs. At the same time, teachers can review students’ interactions with AI to identify their weak spots for strategic intervention.

Tang’s department has developed in-house AI chatbots for students, and teachers will only use the data collected for teaching enhancement, he said, brushing off privacy concerns.

See also: AI as ‘personal therapist’: Despite risks, Hong Kong teenagers turn to chatbots for counselling

Ho shared the positive assessment of AI’s impact in his discipline of supply chain science. Thanks to AI’s assistance, what used to take a year for students to complete, such as problem-solving projects using real-world corporate data, can now be finished within a single semester.

But there has been a growing concern that, at the current rate of development, AI could shortly replace jobs and wipe out whole categories of work. STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – are considered to be at risk.

Between 2022 and 2025, entry-level jobs in Hong Kong plummeted by 60 per cent, with junior roles in administration and programming vanishing at even higher rates, government data showed last month. The city’s labour minister, Chris Sun, said these areas are vulnerable to automation and that authorities are studying the impact of AI across job markets.

Both Tang and Ho dismissed the idea that AI would replace engineering graduates in the future and said that “tedious jobs” may disappear.

“My view is that [AI] will vastly raise productivity, but there may not be as many people with the skills to use these tools to finish tasks,” Tang said.

“STEM subjects are never just about training your basic knowledge; it is about your mindset and problem-solving abilities,” he added. “People who know how to solve problems will always be needed.”

For the humanities, the idea of AI as a threat is less acute, because human-centred knowledge and human interactions – such as engaging with a community – are some things AI cannot produce on its own, Li said.

“Ultimately, what we [in the humanities field] are interested in is people’s unique experience, how it can help us make sense of ourselves and what we can do as humans.”

In contrast, he said, AI can only assist students in this process.

Challenges in higher education

While AI shows much potential for improving teaching and learning, its adoption in higher education comes with its own challenges.

Wan said that, in his experience promoting AI literacy, teachers are often more adept at picking up the technology than students. “I realised our colleagues and teachers have to use [AI] every day at work, while students stop using it at semester breaks,” he said.

He also noted that university freshmen are typically less savvy at using AI for their learning compared with more senior students. The problem, he argued, stemmed from a lack of AI-related training in the city’s secondary school curriculum.

“DSE students are not that AI-ready coming out of secondary schools, so they may struggle when they enter universities and have to use the technology,” he said. “The university should provide some support in that regard.”

Another challenge lies with ensuring fairness as the use of AI becomes ubiquitous. Universities in Hong Kong have sought to provide students with equal access to cutting-edge AI models, but, as Li observed, a minority of students choose not to use the technology for their learning.

“It may be an ethical choice. They may think they have abused water resources, or they may think AI has made them dumb,” Li said of the students.

AI critics have raised concerns about how data centres powering the technology are using millions of litres of water for cooling, depleting the resource in some communities around the world.

There have been debates about AI’s impact on the mind. While some studies suggest that the tool can improve academic performance, other research has found that relying on AI for tasks like essay writing can weaken cognitive activities in the long run – an accumulated “debt” for the brain.

Both the costs and benefits may be real. According to a study published in April, while using AI improved people’s problem-solving in the short term, it impaired their independent performance and made them more likely to give up when not assisted by the technology.

The students who opt out of using AI “may see learning as a form of self-cultivation, and they don’t want AI to interfere with that process,” Li said. “It is an important reminder to respect this group of students when we design our courses.”

As AI grows more powerful at an exponential rate, there are also worries that teachers themselves are at risk of being replaced.

While this is an “interesting” possibility, Tang said, chatbots that are always available cannot “completely” replace teachers and schools.

“Teachers are not only about teaching. They understand the students’ needs through communication, and they guide students towards addressing those needs,” he said.

“AI cannot do this alone so far.”

A social media influencer and former Hong Kong resident is walking back to Hong Kong from Scotland with the goal of raising £1 million (HK$10.5 million) for Scottish charities.

Kate Barr, 30 – known on Instagram as @edukate__ – is currently in Munich, Germany, having set off from Dumfries, a town in southern Scotland, on April 19.

She is fundraising for Scottish Action for Mental Health, The Befriending Project – which tackles loneliness in the community, and The Usual Place – a specialist training academy for people with additional support needs.

“I want people to realise that normal people can do extraordinary things,” she said in a press release on Thursday.

The 10,000-mile journey will take her through Europe and Türkiye, and onto Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China. For safety reasons, she will fly over Iran and Myanmar due to ongoing conflicts.

The press release said Barr “hopes the journey inspires others to contribute in whatever way they can — whether through donations, volunteering, advocacy, or supporting local charities.”

As of Thursday, she has raised more than £800 (HK$8,400).

The Hong Kong government could raise civil servants’ salaries by up to 4.12 per cent this year and plans to introduce a revamped appraisal system for its employees in October, a minister has said.

Secretary for Civil Service Ingrid Yeung said on Thursday that the tentative results of the 2026 Pay Trend Survey suggested a 4.12 per cent pay rise for senior civil servants, 2.64 per cent for middle-tier employees, and 1.17 per cent for junior staff.

The suggestions are based on findings from a survey of around 155,000 employees from 104 private companies conducted between April 2025 and April 2026. The survey’s results will be one of six factors considered by the Executive Council, the city’s top decision-making body, for a pay adjustment, Yeung said.

The other factors include “civil servants’ demand for salary adjustment and their morale,” Yeung said, adding: “I will meet with their representatives next week on these matters.”

The government resumed the pay trend survey this year following a salary freeze in 2025 amid a three-year fiscal deficit that strained public finances.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan estimated in his annual budget speech in February that the government could see a HK$2.9 billion surplus in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Asked on Thursday whether a pay rise for civil servants would lead to a backlash in the wake of the deadly Tai Po fire, Yeung said the “vast majority” of government employees “are professional, efficient, and committed.”

“For the few underperforming civil servants, I believe the best way is to handle them through established mechanisms,” she said.

Yeung also said that under the revised appraisal system, civil servants’ performance assessments would be curved, and the bottom five to 10 per cent of staff may not receive a pay rise.

Department heads, especially those leading smaller teams or highly professional workers, may make a case to the Civil Service Bureau if they find the performance of all their staff members to be satisfactory, she added.

She promised that authorities would review the new mechanism to ensure fairness in the appraisal.