Veni Shone: The Journey to an Intelligent World

[ShangHai, China, February 20, 2020] In the 200 years since the first industrial revolution, we have seen machines evolve from simple labor tools to robust, collaborative computing systems. This is a great achievement in terms of productivity. However, even today, machines can only do regular and repetitive things — they cannot handle social interactions. Humans, on the other hand, are socialized, emotional and self-conscious, but far less capable than machines when it comes to physical strength and the acquisition and processing of information. With their respective skills, humans and machines can enhance each other and advance together to build an intelligent world.

From intelligent individuals, to an intelligent society, and finally to the intelligent ecosystem: this is our journey to an intelligent world. With perception, computing, and expression, devices become intelligent, and connectivity brings them together to build an intelligent, connected society. A united and harmonious ecosystem, which can eliminate obstacles between different intelligent devices and systems and leverage the power of all of its participants, will lay the foundation for a more efficient, intelligent world.

The first step is to create intelligent individuals with perception, computing, and expression.

Advanced digital technology and bionics are driving great changes in AI-based perception technology and making breakthroughs in terms of its wide commercial applications. For example, intelligent devices in the home are able to better care for toddlers and the elderly, provide professional training for indoor workouts, and teach children with interactive learning and gaming experiences. In factories, intelligent devices can make quality inspections faster and more accurate, while automated guided vehicles can intelligently plan routes, avoid congestion, and provide warnings to make logistics more efficient, secure, and cost-effective.

However, AI perception still has a few problems to overcome. First, for the time being, AI is often trained in single scenario and lacks robustness. For example, AI perception used in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) still fails to provide drivers with clearer images of roads when weather conditions are bad. AI perception also needs to shift from unimodal to multimodal, in other words, from acquiring visual- or audio-only information to acquiring information that brings together audio, visual, and more, because humans communicate better when they can see each other's expressions and gestures. In addition, AI should not only perceive information, but also comprehensively understand the environment and human intentions, and make the correct expressions and interactions. Only with these capabilities can intelligent individuals collaborate with each other better, and ultimately build an intelligent society.

Besides perception, we also expect intelligent individuals to be capable of more natural and lifelike expressions. Since visual expression is the most intuitive form of expression, it should come as no surprise that display technologies in the future will enable screens of all sizes, flexible screens, and screens that have both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) functions. All kinds of displays will be used to present a digital world to us, with high resolutions, high frame rates, excellent color reproduction, and AR/VR functions. AI will also be an important element in displays. For example, it will help to upgrade standard definition (SD) videos to high definition (HD) or ultra HD videos through super-resolution technology, and enhance image quality by identifying scenarios.

Then, we can fully connect intelligent individuals to build an intelligent society.

An intelligent society is not just a collection of intelligent individuals, but an interconnected and interactive network. From 2G to 4G, we have built a mobile broadband (MBB) network centered on human beings, and an Internet of Things (IoT) centered on devices. As connectivity technologies like V2X, and WiFi 6 gradually mature and are widely applied commercially, these two networks will be further interconnected and integrated.

We have seen extraordinary smart home applications in sci-fi films, such as holographic displays, intelligent operating systems, and smart, lovable robots. However, in reality, smart homes still have a long way to go. A smart home is the epitome of an intelligent society. It not only combines independent smart appliances, but has a home bus that has a home network with high bandwidth, low latency, and full coverage. This is complemented by a smart home center that can manage and coordinate all devices within the home and offer unique services for all family members across a diverse range of scenarios. In future, everyone will be able to enjoy the convenience that smart homes provide.

Connectivity is a fundamental capability used to create a digital twin for a smart city. In the past, 3G and 4G enabled network connections and the informatization of cities. Now, we use cloud computing, and big data to build smarter cities. In a future smart city, whether on the streets or in homes, intelligent devices will be fully connected. Humans can better manage the physical world by creating a digital twin of the city.

Finally, we need to break barriers and integrate device capabilities if we are to build an intelligent ecosystem.

It is not easy to build an intelligent world. At present, intelligent devices are not very compatible due to their different systems, and this is the biggest obstacle between us and an intelligent world. For example, there are only a few hundred apps that can power intelligent vehicles, which is nothing compared to the millions of apps that are compatible with smartphones. What's more, these intelligent devices are hard to interconnect and are often not capable of sharing capabilities.

To tackle this, it is essential to apply HarmonyOS, which is built on a microkernel-based distributed architecture, and can implement seamless collaboration across devices. This operating system connects intelligent devices through its distributed software bus and pools their capability resources to implement sharing and collaboration. HarmonyOS provides a lot of additional benefits too: flexible decoupling and deployment, hardware mutual assistance, resource sharing, one-time development, multi-device deployment, multi-device authentication, and distributed security. From this year, HiSilicon will start to make HarmonyOS available for all chipsets and share this open ecosystem with all partners.

As human beings, we should never stop exploring the unknown and bringing innovative technologies to the world. IoT, AI, big data and cloud computing are driving the fourth industrial revolution and accelerating the creation of an intelligent world. HiSilicon will continue to uphold the principle of openness, collaboration, and responsibility, and make every effort to enable the connectivity of everything. It will strive to bring digital transformation to all industries, and ultimately bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world.