In the not-too-distant future, many hassles and complications of modern life will disappear. We will enjoy better healthcare, green energy, traffic decongestion and more comfortable living spaces as a result of the seamless integration of the digital and physical realms, according Huawei’s Intelligent World 2030 vision.

This vision was the focus of the company’s Intelligent World 2030 Forum, which took place in April in Shenzhen, China. Part of the Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2022, the event featured speakers from Huawei’s management and industry partners. The discussion focused on how digitization and decarbonization are creating intelligent, green approaches in areas such as healthcare, transportation, food production, and cybersecurity.

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A 317-page report published by Huawei in the fall of 2021 laid out the full vision for Intelligent World 2030. It was the culmination of three years of research that included 2,000 workshops and exchanges with 1,000 academics, customers and industry partners.

The report explores the potential effect on our lives of advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G and blockchain. It analyzes macro trends in areas such as healthcare, food, living spaces, energy and digital trust to shape a vision of the future where “waits and delays, queues and paperwork, hassles and drudgery dissolve in almost instantaneous provision of goods and services when and where you need them most.”

Future Communications

During the April event, speakers called for collaboration between industry players and society at large to move toward Huawei’s vision of the intelligent world. Gavin Gai, President of Huawei ICT Strategy and Business Development, focused on the communications networks of the future.

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Those networks, he said, will have six defining characteristics – cubic broadband; harmonized communication and sensing; deterministic experience; AI-native capabilities, security and trustworthiness; and green, low-carbon construction and operations.

“It is our relentless pursuit of superior experience that drives innovation and evolution in communications networks. We are about to witness the change from tens of billions of connections between people to hundreds of billions of connections between things,” Gai said.

Jiang Tao, Vice President of Huawei's Computing Product Line, spoke about building a green, integrated, collaborative foundation for intelligent computing.

“By 2030, the computing industry will be characterized by physical-layer breakthroughs, cognitive intelligence, diversified computing, intrinsic security, multi-dimensional collaboration, and green, integrated computing,” he said. "The digital and physical worlds will be seamlessly integrated, and computing will be able to simulate, reproduce, and enhance the physical world."

AI Transformation

Tian Yonghong, IEEE Fellow and Chief Technology Engineer of Peng Cheng Cloud Brain, focused on the transformative power of AI. Peng Cheng Cloud Brain, a collaboration between Huawei and Peng Cheng Laboratory, conducts artificial intelligence (AI) research in natural language, computer vision, autonomous driving, smart transportation and smart healthcare.

The laboratory, Tian said, is developing a super AI computing platform that will play a major role in addressing today’s challenges. Already, AI is responsible for some major changes, he said. For instance, it is having an impact on how the economy grows and how scientists and technologists approach their work.

AI is one of the technologies featured prominently in the Intelligent World 2030 report. According to one of the report’s contributors, Gao Wen, Peng Cheng Laboratory Boya Chair Professor at Peking University, AI has “been woven into the fabric of our lives, including clothing, food, living spaces, and transportation.”

In coming years, he wrote, AI will become even more intrinsic to our lives. “Looking ahead to the next five to 10 years, the use of AI will be spread to more areas, such as AI-led 6G intelligent sensing networks, and neuromorphic systems that will go beyond existing machine vision imaging systems.”

The report delivers digital forecasts for 2030 in eight specific areas – healthcare, food, living spaces, cities, transportation, enterprises energy and digital trust. In health care, the report predicts: “By 2030, sensitive biosensors will be in widespread use, and massive amounts of health data will be stored on the cloud, making health computable. People will be able to proactively manage their health, shifting focus from treatment to prevention.”

In the area of food production, the report says, data collection “will enable us to control factors affecting crop growth, such as temperature and humidity, so that we can build vertical farms unaffected by the uncertainties of climate and weather. By 2030, we will be building more resilient and sustainable food systems and relying on firm data rather than the vagaries of the heavens.”

In addition, the report predicts that 50% of vehicles sold in 2030 will be electric, that 10 gigabit fiber broadband will be present in 23% of homes, and “every 10,000 workers will work with 390 robots.” In the cybersecurity realm, blockchain, AI fraud detection and privacy-enhancing computation “will deliver an intelligent world with digital trust.”

This content is sponsored by Huawei.