The July 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference report points to a brutal, irreversible turning point in global economics. When state-level forces systematically shift artificial intelligence from an “expensive frontier technology” into an affordable, universally accessible public utility, it validates a profound structural reality: the total commoditization of pure technical execution.

When high-quality strategy, clean code, graphic layouts, and optimized logistical blueprints can be synthesized on demand for near-zero marginal cost, routine competency ceases to be a rare asset. It becomes the baseline — the baseline cost of admission to enter the market. This is the zero point.

Hong Kong stands at a critical crossroads in this geoeconomic shift. If the special administrative region’s government bureaus, educational institutions, and central business community continue to rely on the industrial-era playbook of traditional “optimization” — attempting to outpace and outprice an infinite, costless machine baseline — it will plunge directly into a severe commodity trap. Hong Kong’s survival strategy cannot be built on chasing the next software update. It requires a radical, defiant move upward into the realm of human resonance, anchoring its future growth across three sovereign directives.

First, policy sovereignty: From foreign API dependency to data enclosure:

Hong Kong’s policy leaders must immediately recognize that subsidizing and integrating third-party commercial cloud AI application programming interfaces (APIs) is a long-term risk to data equity. Every single time public departments upload civic data to generate formatted summaries, the city leaks its rare, localized insights into external public repositories that global competitors can easily access to replicate those models.

The government must execute a strict policy of active data enclosure:

Mandate isolated compute enclaves: The Digital Policy Office must transition public workflows away from open cloud platforms. Government capital should be explicitly reallocated to fund local, state-of-the-art GPU clusters housed securely within Hong Kong’s borders, running sandboxed open-weight models completely air-gapped from the public web.

Drive physical “AI plus” integration: Follow the national directive to move AI out of the screen and embed it directly into the physical economy. Hong Kong must offer aggressive tax incentives for deep scenario-based deployments: leveraging advanced robotics and localized algorithms to reengineer the dynamic logistics of the Kwai Tsing container terminals, automate maritime customs data, and optimize high-end supply chains across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Second, pedagogical overhaul: from “compliant calculators” to elite curators:

Hong Kong’s traditional school curriculum (such as the HKDSE framework) operates like an industrial-era sorting machine. Children are trained to spend years memorizing textbook materials, executing structured mathematical drills, and writing uniform essays. Today, a standard open-source AI engine can clear these examinations in seconds. Continuing to grade children on tasks that a machine performs for pennies is institutional negligence.

The city must initiate a curriculum revolution centered around soul cultivation:

Replace rote memorization with epistemological critique: Stop treating “prompt engineering” as a specialized course; as interfaces become ambient, prompt writing will disappear. Instead, introduce mandatory courses in philosophy, formal logic, and ethics starting in primary school. Do not teach students how to ask AI for a safe answer; teach them how to ruthlessly analyze and question the machine’s assumptions.

Cultivate the core metaskills: Reallocate 40 percent of standard classroom hours away from repetitive drills and invest them heavily into the core human faculties: feeling (empathy), seeing (systemic design thinking), dreaming (radical innovation), making (tangible craft), and learning (deep adaptability). Move student grading benchmarks toward high-friction, physical verification: oral defense panels, physical prototype construction, and real-world community problem-solving presentations.

Third, workplace defiance: from algorithmic sameness to the human filter:

For enterprises operating in Central and the Science Park, the greatest commercial risk in 2026 is algorithmic sameness. If a financial advisory firm or creative marketing agency uses the exact same off-the-shelf AI engines as its rivals to format audits, optimize ad copy, and screen investment data, its output will naturally regress to a safe, uninspiring statistical average. The brand will lose its pricing power and blend into the digital noise.

The mandate for the modern workspace is simple: Use the machine to scale the basement efficiency, but preserve the human soul at the ceiling.

Automate the administrative basement: Allow generative AI platforms to fully absorb the low-stakes cognitive bureaucracy — such as basic code generation, internal compliance checks, routine language translation, and baseline data aggregation.

Empower the human filter: Redirect the time and capital saved via automation to elevate human judgment. Train corporate teams to act as elite creative curators. Executives must step away from screen dashboards and evaluate creative and strategic assets based on taste, cultural intuition, and emotional resonance — the incomputable traits an algorithm cannot mimic.

The whiteboard manifesto for Hong Kong: 

This is the fire that the post-AI creative era seeks to ignite. The machines have already handled the bottom layer of technical execution. What remains for Hong Kong is a pure battle of human will, taste, and strategic conviction.

The baseline of global competency has been completely leveled by open-source distribution. In a world of infinite, costless machine outputs, the ultimate structural law of the market remains absolute: “The machine hands you the baseline of competency. Only your soul, your taste, and your sovereignty can secure the ceiling.”

Welcome to the zero point. It is time to step past the baseline.

The author is vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing and an adviser to the Film and TV School at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.