AI for Indoor Soft-Shell Crab Farming? This Venture is Booming in Hong Kong

Artificial intelligence's presence is almost everywhere, and believe it or not, it is also present on your favorite soft shell crab, particularly when you venture to Hong Kong's Causeway Bay, particularly at the Hee Kee Fried Crab restaurant. The second-generation owner of this legacy restaurant turned to AI farming, to cultivate their protein indoors.

AI Crab farming is now the solution these business owners turn to, as the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected their business, with Hee Kee closing down two of its three branches due to hardships in sourcing the crab.

AI Indoor Soft Shell Crab Farming Venture in Hong Kong

South China Morning Post's recent report centers on Liu Wai-man, the second-gen owner of the Hee Kee Fried Crab restaurant in Hong Kong, who also founded the AI Farming Company in Hong Kong. He collaborated with fellow business owners, Hao Xiaotian and Legislative Council member Johnny Ng Kit-Chong, to bring AI farming indoors for the soft shell crabs.

Wai-man was heavily affected by the pandemic when everything closed down, from his restaurants to sourcing the soft shell crabs from the waters present in the area.

Their venture was launched in 2021 to provide indoor solutions to answer this problem and is now seeing a boom in their business to help their restaurants and others source from within.

AI helped Save a 57-Year-Old Business

It is important to note that soft-shell crabs are the same species as regular crabs, but what makes them special is when they exit from their hard shell to form a new one, as part of their life cycle. Harvesters only have four hours before their shells harden again, and this crucial time is what their AI model monitors, ensuring their health and survival in time for harvesting.

The AI developed by Wai-man and partners helped save the business, particularly the Hee Kee Fried Crab, whose main protein is the soft shell crabs, which they raise and harvest indoors.

AI for Companies, Apps

One of the most significant applications of AI is to help businesses and apps to grow more with this machine-learning technology that presents massive assistance to owners and partners. One of the most famous among the bunch is Microsoft and OpenAI's mutually-beneficial partnership which gave birth to Bing with ChatGPT technology that grew the search engine.

Enough about the Big Tech and other startup tech companies using AI, as it is also applicable for other ventures that are not exactly where one would put the technology with.

In California and Arizona, there is an AI-powered robot called "Titan" which snips the weed automatically and does not need human supervision, also identifying which to cut off from their crops to avoid losing produce in the future.

AI helps a lot in different tasks or jobs, depending on the development or application present as made by its creators intended for different focuses. In Hong Kong, this was the solution to their hardships in sourcing soft shell crabs, their main product for restaurants in the area, one that cultivates life and produces for the continuation of their livelihood.