First acquaintance with artificial intelligence, marvel at its impressive record to sweep the world's top Go masters, as if from the future of higher wisdom; and now, voice assistants, interest recommendations, image recognition, etc. have become an indispensable part of our work and life, in a few years, artificial intelligence has quietly from the sound of magical black technology, gradually stepped off the altar, into daily production and life...
From December 27 to 29 last year, the 23rd CHTF was held at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center. As the largest and most influential science and technology exhibition in China, the CHTF is always regarded as a weather vane and barometer for the technology industry, and the most advanced, practical and forward-looking scientific and technological achievements are gathered here.
At the CHTF, how artificial intelligence can be integrated into cities and empower urban development has become a hot topic, and Huawei also displayed the "AI formula" of new smart cities from multiple dimensions.
In 2020, Huawei put forward the concept of urban intelligent body, regarding the city as an organism and a living body, and hoped to use ICT technology to create an integrated intelligent collaborative system with "eyes, brain, hands, and pulses", "sense, transmission, knowledge, and use" for each city, so that cities can "perceive, think, evolve, and have temperature", improve the level of urban comprehensive governance, make residents happier, make enterprises more productive, and make the industry more creative.
In more than a year of practice, Huawei has gradually realized that to release the infinite potential of urban intelligent body architecture, artificial intelligence must be introduced, as Yue Kun, vice president of Huawei and president of the global government business department of enterprise BG, said at the Huawei Urban Intelligent Body Summit 2021, using intelligent bodies to give urban intelligent life, to build a foundation of "artificial intelligence", "one city and one wisdom" to build a base of urban intelligent bodies, and cultivate the adaptive ability of urban life.
Pioneer cities have laid out AI computing power bases
The city has opened up the integration and development of artificial intelligence, and the construction of AI computing power has become the foundation for the intelligent and intelligent development of the city. At the CHTF Huawei Urban Intelligent Body booth, the artificial intelligence section showcased the Ascend Smart City solution, which summarizes the relevant software and hardware requirements required for the underlying AI computing power through the intensive urban AI computing power platform, so as to make the city operate more efficiently and intelligently.
Huawei's blockbuster "Smart City Artificial Intelligence Computing Platform White Paper" has made a footnote to this trend. The white paper aims to analyze the pain points in the development process of smart cities, put forward the development ideas of artificial intelligence computing platforms to empower smart cities, and the overall construction of smart city artificial intelligence computing platforms should follow the principles of intensive construction, technological autonomy, and cloud-edge collaboration. With its full-stack innovative AI capabilities, intensive platform construction, and prosperous industrial ecology, Ascend Smart City solution has become the core highlight of the white paper.
More and more cities have begun to devote themselves to the construction of AI computing power, and pioneer cities such as Wuhan, Xi'an, and Shenzhen have become models for opening up the layout of artificial intelligence infrastructure. In October 2020, "Hero City" Wuhan joined hands with Huawei to take the lead in launching the construction of an artificial intelligence computing center. In May 2021, the Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, the country's first artificial intelligence computing center with the nature of public service, was put into operation. The Wuhan model of "one center and four platforms" and the Wuhan architecture of "artificial intelligence + high-performance computing", driven by the artificial intelligence computing center, Hubei's artificial intelligence industry has flourished, and the intelligent upgrading of the industry has entered the fast lane in an all-round way.
At present, the peak AI computing power provided by the Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center is as high as 100P, and it is about to reach 200P. The Artificial Intelligence Computing Center has become a new business card for Wuhan's scientific and technological development and smart city construction, bringing a new development engine of the AI era to this heroic city, and creating a "Chinese model" for the development of the artificial intelligence industry.
"Sense" and "transmission": AI also needs to "have rice under the pot"
If the surging computing power construction is the foundation of "one city and one wisdom" and realizes "fast calculation", then the next question is "what is it" - where does the data come from? There is no data but only computing power, as if there is a strong firewood but no rice under the pot.
With the advent of the digital era, making data the fifth largest factor of production after land, labor, capital and technology, releasing the value of data elements with AI computing power, stimulating innovation and generating new knowledge, is a key part of AI-empowered cities.
In Huawei's four-tier urban intelligent body architecture of "sense, transmission, knowledge, and use", "sense" is perception, just like the human body's "eyes", with cameras, sensors and other IoT devices ubiquitous perception, collection of various types of urban data, to achieve intelligent interaction; "transmission" is transmission, as the human body "vein" flows blood to transmit data, 5G, IPv6, F5G and other network technologies appear, providing intelligent connectivity for thousands of industries. In the digital dock section of the Huawei booth, Huawei demonstrated the intelligent cloud network solution based on the "IPv6+" technological innovation and F5G applications in large-scale telemedicine, all-optical industrial networks, all-optical smart cities and other scenarios, and the value of "sense" and "transmission" for obtaining data was most intuitively presented.
Based on the design and deployment of the "four-body" concept of urban intelligence, urban empowerment, digital twin and operation support, Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, adopts IPv6+ to build a new generation of e-government extranet. As the first SRv6Policy deployment bureau in the government industry, Zhongshan's "one network" has taken the lead, setting up a high-standard and high-quality construction model for the national government extranet, laying a solid foundation for the construction of a medium-sized city "smart city" model of "first-class in the province and leading in the country".
The massive data obtained by the intelligent interaction layer and the intelligent connection layer ensures that the AI computing power is "under the pot", and the cloud, AI enabling (ModelArts), application enabling (ROMA) and data enabling (DAYU) are used to create urban intelligent hubs, so that data can be aggregated, calculated, stored, and then generated application value.
AI applications give smart lives to cities
With AI computing power to build a solid urban digital "foundation" and a continuous flow of "data oil" with the urban "digital pipe network", we can glimpse the digital transformation of the industry.
In hall 4 of the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center of the CHTF, with an area of 260 square meters, Huawei went deep into every subdivision scene of the city and comprehensively demonstrated the panoramic "sandbox" of urban digital transformation led by the concept of urban intelligence, and the application of artificial intelligence in the industry has far exceeded the cognition of many viewers.
At the Intelligent Network Booth, Huawei Intelligent Network Solutions worked with partners to create a complete "car-road-network-cloud-map" intelligent network solution through Huawei ICT technology, polishing the "eyes" of cars with a variety of roadside perception units and communication RSU, making the travel vision more "clear", and successfully realizing functions such as collision warning, accident prompts, and signal light prompts, effectively enabling traffic digitalization and automobile intelligence, and creating an innovative city.
At the Smart Heating Booth, Huawei demonstrated the "source, network, station, household" collaborative control, on-demand production, and balanced heating intelligent body, enabling digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and big data to empower traditional industries, promote the upgrading and transformation of the heating industry, and truly realize the "temperature" of science and technology.
There are also AI sports venues, AI pig breeding, AI water conservancy and water affairs, "one network communication office" and "one network unified management"... The black technology that penetrates into the specific scenes of the city penetrates into every corner of the city, and the city also shines with the brilliance of wisdom-led innovation.
Looking back at the development process of China's smart cities, it is not difficult to find that 2016-2017 is a key watershed. According to the "New Smart City Research Report" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the construction of China's smart city in this stage has come to a new cycle of comprehensive construction of new smart cities from the concept introduction stage and the pilot exploration stage. The key to its power and development dividend lies in the full maturity of artificial intelligence technology, which has brought significant acceleration to smart cities.
Huawei's urban smarters have helped many cities deepen their digital transformation through the "three completes" capabilities of all-scenario intelligence, all-factor aggregation, and full-cycle operation. In more than a year of practice, more than 50 cities such as Shanghai, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Chengdu, Changchun and Nanchang have successively joined the ranks of "urban intelligence" and strive to build a smart city that can perceive, think, evolve and have temperature.
Computing power, data superimposed industry know-how, the construction of AI Style new smart city is no longer out of reach. AI is no longer just a condiment for entertainment and leisure, its figure has appeared on the production end and supply side, and will eventually surpass the standard of traditional cities such as water, electricity, coal, and roads, giving the city a more intelligent vitality.