HK workers least optimistic in Asia about AI career benefits

This comes despite 91% of the city’s professionals using the tech at work.

Hong Kong professionals are heavy users of artificial intelligence (AI), yet the least optimistic in Asia about its career benefits.

A majority (91%) use AI at work, slightly lower than the Asia-wide rate of 93%. However, only 66% believe the technology will positively affect their career opportunities, according to a Robert Walters survey.

This is the lowest proportion across the 10 markets surveyed and below the regional average of 75%. In comparison, another 59% of respondents were confident they could keep their skills up to date as jobs evolve.

“Hong Kong and Singapore show comparatively weaker career outlooks despite widespread AI use,” the report added.

Skills relevance emerged as the leading concern amongst professionals, with 41% worried that their skills could become obsolete. This was followed by accountability for AI-driven decisions at 40% and job displacement at 39%.

Across Asia, 58% of employers have introduced AI in the workplace, whilst 33% cited workforce optimisation as a key objective for adoption. 

“The most immediate shift isn’t mass job loss,” Robert Walters said. “It's the redesign of tasks inside roles: routine execution is increasingly supported by technology.”

The report found AI had the greatest reported impact on administration and business support, cited by 43% of employers, followed by IT and digital transformation at 35%, and accounting and finance at 32%. 

Content creation was the most commonly supported task by the technology, at 47%, followed by data analysis at 40%, research at 38%, and workflow optimisation at 24%. 

Human workers remained responsible for verification, decision-making, risk management and handling exceptions, it added,

Data analysis and critical thinking were identified as the leading skills for an AI-driven workplace, cited by 65% and 64% of employers across Asia, respectively. 

Creativity, selected by 36%, was specifically highlighted in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan.

Robert Walters surveyed close to 5,000 professionals and companies across 10 Asian markets over six weeks in the fourth quarter of 2025.