Weekly AI News Update (02-08 January 2026)

Weekly AI News Update (02-08 January 2026)

The Hong Kong government has launched a $3 billion AI Subsidy Scheme to accelerate the local AI ecosystem by providing organisations with subsidised access to the Cyberport AI Supercomputing Centre. The initiative, which already supports around 20 approved projects, is enabling research breakthroughs such as the University of Hong Kong’s development of a generative AI model for efficient 3D scene generation on consumer-grade devices. 🔗 Hong Kong Government News
China’s Smart Education platform, now the world’s largest digital educational resource centre, reports over 72.6 billion visits and serves 178 million users globally. The platform hosts a vast repository of courses and is actively advancing AI education by providing extensive teacher training and integrating AI literacy across all university disciplines, supporting China’s rise to sixth in global digital education rankings. 🔗China Daily
Higher education’s relationship with generative AI in 2026 is poised between strategic integration and growing sectoral skepticism. While many institutions are scaling AI fluency initiatives and seeking enterprise-wide efficiency gains through technology, experts anticipate a potential period of disillusionment as the costs, ethical challenges, and pedagogical limitations of current tools become more apparent. 🔗 Inside Higher Ed
The full potential of AI in education hinges not on the technology itself, but on the strategic leadership and comprehensive support systems that guide its implementation. While AI promises personalised learning and administrative efficiency, past initiatives like One Laptop Per Child demonstrate that success depends on pairing technology with robust teacher training, equitable access, curriculum integration, and ethical governance to ensure it bridges, rather than widens, existing educational divides. 🔗 Forbes
Education experts are issuing a critical warning about a growing “AI literacy gap,” arguing that understanding how artificial intelligence works is becoming as fundamental as reading and writing for future citizenship. They caution that without universal computing education, a social divide could emerge where only a privileged minority can critically evaluate and challenge the automated decisions that will increasingly govern areas like healthcare, finance, and justice. 🔗 The Guardian