Technology Blending with Humanity: Huawei AI Makes the Impossible Possible

BARCELONA, Spain—February 25, 2019—Huawei held an “AI for Good” roundtable and cocktail party on February 25 during MWC 2019. Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group (BG), delivered a speech, sharing Huawei’s goals in using AI technology to help people improve their quality of life and live to their full potential.

The development of AI technology has now reached a new era. In ten to fifteen years, AI will catch up with the average level of human intelligence. But at present, the application of AI on smartphones is considered a milestone and breakthrough. In two or three years, practical AI applications will become pervasive.

“Based on Huawei HiAI platform, we are looking for more partners & developers to let people enjoy the benefits of AI. On one hand, this will enable people to do what they were not able to do before and unleash their potential. In addition, Huawei will use AI technology to improve quality of life for those with disabilities,” said Richard Yu.

Dr. Chenglu Wang, President of Software Engineering of Huawei Consumer BG also shared insights into Huawei’s Mobile AI strategy and introduced applications and HiAI 2.0 developer success stories, including: StorySign, SketchAR, Sound of Light and Makaron. To date, there are more than 1,400 partners and 560,000 developers actively working on building out the HiAI platform with applications that are supported on more than 40 million Huawei devices worldwide.

According to Dr. Wang, “Huawei HiAI provides partners and developers with cloud-device-chip AI capabilities, facilitating them to develop faster, smarter and easier-to-use mobile apps. Huawei has established an open AI lab in London, six AI labs in Europe, and has built joint research centres with more than 10 universities. With investment in computing vision, natural language processing and other basic research, Huawei is committed to pioneering AI research and application.”

Huawei also showcased some applications developed with partners, leveraging AI technology to sophisticatedly fuse music, art and healthcare.

Walter Ji, President of Huawei’s Western Europe Consumer Business Group, discussed the “Unfinished Symphony” project, “Using Huawei’s AI, we taught our Mate 20 Pro smartphone to analyse an unfinished, nearly 200 years old piece of music. We then worked with Emmy award winning composer Lucas Cantor to compose the final two movements of Schubert’s famous Symphony No. 8. “Huawei also invited a symphony orchestra to perform this special version of Unfinished Symphony.

During the event, Victoria Pueyo and Marta Ortin from leading Research Institute, IIS ARAGÓN, and co-founders of DIVE Medical startup announced a partnership with Huawei to launch the Track.AI project. They will use Huawei’s HiAI platform to create a Huawei smartphone-based assessment of visual function in children. This initiative will be promoted globally with the goal of creating an easy-to-use, portable and affordable device to identify children with visual disorders.

As artificial intelligence is set to increase exponentially, Huawei is committed to developing smart devices into intelligent tools by building end-to-end capabilities that support coordinated development of chips, devices, and the cloud. The ultimate goal is to bring a revolutionary, all-scenario experience to consumers.