At the Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2024, Aka Dai, the Director of Huawei Cloud Marketing, delivered a keynote titled “Cloud for Good: Bringing Innovation to Life”, sharing Huawei Cloud’s philosophy of applying technology for the greater good, and announcing the “Cloud for Good” initiative. Through cloud, AI, and other innovative technologies, a sustainable, promising future is on the horizon.
Cloud for Good with Everything as a Service
Huawei Cloud envisions an intelligent future with “Everything as a Service”. With Huawei’s over 30 years of experience in digital transformation, instead of just integrating global infrastructure resources, or investing billions in the most advanced technologies, Huawei Cloud’s mission is to turn all these into cloud services that empower everyone to not only succeed, but to lead in their digital journey. According to Mr. Dai, Huawei Cloud also envisions a future with “cloud for good”, and is committed to making this vision a reality, focusing on education, environment, healthcare, and inclusion.
At this summit, these visions were illustrated through four stories:
Agriculture: AI Increases Crop Production
Thailand is renowned for fruits, especially durians. In the past, farmers relied on their own experience to determine the maturity of durians, using methods such as tapping, listening, and smelling. However, these methods were not the most effective.
A game changer comes, thanks to the partnership among the Charoen Pokphand Group in Thailand, Huawei Cloud, and several other companies. By utilizing Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR) detection technology and Huawei Cloud’s AI capabilities, a smart device increases the accuracy of predicting durian maturity from 50% to an impressive 91%. “Farmers can now know how mature a durian is in just 1 to 2 seconds while keeping the durian flesh and intact. This results in more efficient sorting and higher quality,” said Dai.
Weather: AI-assisted Forecasts on Extreme Weather to Safeguard People’s Lives
Huawei Cloud has developed the Pangu weather model, trained on a massive dataset of global weather observations spanning the past 40 years. Pangu model can predict the global typhoon path for the next 10 days. In sharp contrast, traditional methods require 4 to 5 hours and 3,000 high-performance servers. During the flood season in 2023, the Pangu Weather Model successfully predicted the paths of super typhoons such as Saola.
Mr.Dai also shared a story about a local NGO organization in Madagascar named Mitao Forecast. This organization has further utilized this Pangu model, extending the effective forecast time from 3 days to 10 days. In predicting extreme weather such as typhoons, Pangu has demonstrated significant advantages, helping local fishermen respond more calmly to the onslaught of harsh weather, thereby protecting the lives and property of 600,000 to 750,000 local people.
Guarding the Sarawak Rainforest Against Logging and Deforestation
Sarawak, the largest state in East Malaysia, serves as the home to the world’s oldest and most pristine tropical rainforest, a 140 million-year-old ecosystem celebrated for its hornbill species. “To preserve this precious ecosystem, we are exploring the use of cloud computing and AI technologies. Partnering with nature conservancy groups, we have installed acoustic sensors in the forest,” said Mr. Dai.
The deployment of advanced sensors has already yielded significant results. In 30 square kilometers of rainforest, the monitoring system has issued 34 alerts regarding instances of illegal logging. This proactive approach not only preserves natural treasures but also innovation ensure sustainable coexistence of tech and nature through innovation.
AI Medical Assistants Help Save Patients in Time
Huawei Cloud empowers the healthcare industry with its Pangu Medical Model, trained on high-quality data from 16 million academic journals and equipped with over 1 million knowledge graphs. It works as an intelligent assistant for doctors and patients during medical examinations, diagnosis and treatment, and personal health management.
Mr. Dai shared that, ” We used AI medical model in a hospital in China to help identify 11 patients with a rare disease called adrenal insufficiency out of 4,268, in just three months, preventing them from being misdiagnosed and saving their lives in time.” Runda Medical, a leading healthcare service provider in China, developed their medical AI model based on Pangu, which is expectedly to be adopted by 4,000 hospitals for report interpretation and diagnosis, promoting inclusive healthcare.
Nurturing an Innovation Talent Ecosystem for Thailand
In Thailand, Huawei has trained over 96,200 people and provided more than 3,000 training hours in terms of cloud, 5G and AI, as well as Huawei’s latest digital practices in various domains. “We have organized developer competitions, Green Engineer Training programs, Women in Tech empowerment training, Digital Leadership Training, etc. These initiatives align with the ‘Ignite Thailand 2030’ vision and Cloud-First strategy, and contribute to the nation’s sustainable development agenda,” Mr. Dai noted.
Cloud for Good: Bringing Innovation to Life in Thailand
“These are stories of collaboration, innovation, and a strong belief in the power of cloud.” At the end, Mr. Dai proposed the “Cloud for Good” initiative, calling on partners and customers in Thailand to join hands in accelerating the digital journey in Thailand, especially for domains from agriculture, weather, healthcare, to talent cultivation, to benefit more people, rejuvenate the nature, and contribute to a better home for all.