By Michael Macdonald, Chief Digital Officer, Huawei SEA
The next decade will be a journey towards building an intelligent world during which we will witness dreams of the past turn into inventions of the day and features of science fiction emerge as daily life utilities. Exploration and innovation will be the driving force of this new future.
Our quality of life at home and work will be greatly improved. communication and travel will be easier and safer, farming methods will be sustainable and green, and our living spaces will be even more comfortable.
Intelligent World 2030
Our lives in 2030 will face marked improvements including more plentiful food, larger living spaces, renewable energy, and greater efficiency and security. In fact, nearly all repetitive and dangerous work will be done by machines.
The focus of healthcare will shift from curing diseases to preventing them from happening in the first place. Medical and public health data will be computed and modelled to identify potential health problems, after which precise medical solutions powered by Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence will be provided.
Currently our farming is dependent on climate, but vertical farms of 2030 won’t be affected by unexpected rain, storm or drought. Instead, plants will grow in artificial, controlled environments with soil, sunlight, oxygen, water and other nutrients necessary for plant growth administered precisely. 3D printing will make it possible for people to create artificial meat, and we will no longer be dependent on animals for dairy products like milk, leather and meat.
Our homes and offices will become Zero Carbon buildings using renewable energy and with all waste recycled. Digital Technology will automatically adapt our home environment to our specific needs, making our living spaces more efficient and affordable.
New electric vehicles of 2030 will become the third mobile space and new aircraft will make emergency services more efficient, reduce the cost of medical supplies and change the way we commute. New digital technologies will ultimately make cities more humane and liveable.
The next ten years will be an era of exponential growth, with collaboration between human and machine intelligence and benefitting all of society.
Communications 2030
In the next decade, the boundaries of network connectivity will continue to expand. By 2030, technologies such as XR (Extended Reality), naked-eye 3D display, and digital touch will define our digital experience through more immersive Digital Vision, Digital Touch and Digital Smell.
Networks will evolve beyond connecting billions of people to connecting hundreds of billions of things, shifting focus of network design from human cognition to machine cognition. These connected things will generate massive amounts of data which will require multi-level computing infrastructure with computing powers large enough to provide connectivity at massive scales.
Delivering a consistent network experience for homes, offices and vehicles will require satellite broadband Internet, industrial Internet and a scalable network for computing power. As applications become more intelligent, communication networks will evolve towards green, low-carbon cubic broadband AI-native networks with deterministic experience, embedded security and trustworthiness.
By the end of 2030, it’s predicted that total global connections will reach 200 billion and enterprise network access, home broadband access and individual wireless access will exceed 10 Gbit/s.
Computing 2030
By 2030, the digital and physical worlds will be seamlessly converged allowing people and machines to interact through perception and emotion. AI (Artificial Intelligence) will be everywhere powering new experiences by becoming the telescopes and microscopes of scientists, and helping us enhance our understanding of everything from the tiniest of quarks to the largest of cosmological phenomena.
Industries already making extensive use of digital technology will become more intelligent with AI, and that will be powered by even more energy efficient computers that will bring us closer to zero carbon computing. Digital technologies will become a critical tool for achieving the global goal of carbon neutrality.
It’s predicted that by 2030 humanity will enter the Yottabyte era with general-purpose computing power increasing ten times and AI computing power increasing by 500 times. But computing is already approaching physical limits driving the need for innovation in software, machine architecture and systems. The entire industry needs to jointly explore a new foundation for computing by breaking through the physical limits of semiconductors and making computing greener, more secure and more intelligent.
Digital Power 2030
Humanity is entering the age of digital power, defined by low carbon development, electrification and intelligent transformation. New renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind power will gradually replace fossil fuels.
Power electronic technology and digital technology are being converged to enable “bits to manage watts” throughout the energy system, giving rise to various intelligent applications on the “energy cloud”.
By 2030, solar energy will become one of our main power sources and the proportion of renewables in global electricity generation will reach 50 percent. Electric vehicles, as a proportion of new vehicles sold, will exceed 50 percent and renewable energy will power 80 percent of digital infrastructure.
Intelligent Vehicles 2030
Electrification and intelligence are unstoppable. ICT is already permeating the automotive industry giving us intelligent driving, intelligent spaces, intelligent services and intelligent operations. ICT will power a new intelligent automotive industry that will help carmakers build better vehicles.
The ultimate goal of intelligent driving is to use autonomous driving to greatly reduce the incidence of traffic accidents and deliver an efficient and seamless travel experience. Intelligent driving is currently limited to closed roads but will gradually see more applications on public roads and in urban areas.
Vehicles will become a new intelligent space, powered by AI, biometric recognition, in-vehicle optical sensors, and AR/VR that will bring new features to the cockpit. These technologies will truly transform the vehicle from a flexible mobile space to an intelligent living space that combines the virtual and physical worlds. By 2030, autonomous vehicles will account for 20% of new vehicles sold in China, electric vehicles will account for more than 50% of new vehicles sold, vehicles will come equipped with computing power of over 5,000 TOPS, and in-vehicle network transmission speeds will exceed 100 Gbps.
The Intelligent World 2030 Forum is the first time that Huawei has systematically shared cutting-edge research and insights into the next decade with the aim to bring value to global digital transformation and the digital economy.
Imagination and creativity will determine how far we will go in the future, action will determine how quickly we will reach it. There are still plenty of challenges to overcome on the road to the intelligent world, but we believe the greatest wisdom is found in shared ideas and dreams are the key driver of social progress. Moving towards the next decade, let’s work together to shape a better, intelligent world. Afterall, the best way to predict the future is to create it.
