This Is What You Need to Know About Huawei’s Project Da Vinci

Huawei’s acting CEO said in his message:

Our new journey: Building a fully connected, intelligent world, Our focus: ICT infrastructure and intelligent devices

The “Da Vinci” project of Huawei, or “project D” as referred by some Huawei executives, is an embodiment of this statement. This project focuses on bringing Artificial Intelligence into everything the Chinese tech giant makes, from telecom base stations and cloud data centers to devices like smartphones and surveillance cameras. Although AI functions have also been added to Huawei smartphones and other products, these will be the stepping stone for Huawei to enter the highly competitive Artificial Intelligence market.

Huawei has yet to release an official report on the progress of its internal “Project Da Vinci” but judging from its annual report and sources close to the tech firm have indicated three things:

• The project’s aim is to develop AI for all of Huawei’s services.
• It may entail the development of an AI chip in the market. 
• Once the project is successful, Huawei could be put at the center of the map for everything in tech as the world moves forward towards AI-driven technology in everything we use.

The first and foremost step is to develop AI chips for data centers, which can support applications such as voice and image recognition in the cloud. This would bring it into conflict with NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel. All these vendors have recently released AI-boosted hardware targeting the data center market. This will also end Huawei’s dependence on NVIDIA, so such a transition by Huawei makes good business sense.

But there are negative sides of Da Vinci, the AI push can also increase the U.S. government’s concerns about the growing influence of Huawei, whose telecom gear and consumer smartphones are effectively banned in the US due to fears that Beijing might use them to spy on Americans. Such an approach should also make Huawei more resistant to potential trade sanctions forbidding it from purchasing American technologies due to import violations and effectively crippling the entirety of its global operations.

The project’s applications include ensuring smoother and regulated network performances - key considerations with 5G on the horizon. Smart cities are also another huge potential use case for Huawei's AI technology, with reports further mentioning the company's work in video surveillance cameras. Here, AI could be utilized to quickly scan through hours of video to detect criminals, or to monitor traffic build-up to ensure a city never gets blocked.

The thing we find greatest in Project Da Vinci is that the AI push by Huawei fits neatly into China’s broader ambitions to develop and employ homegrown technologies. May this be better for humanity. What vibes do you get by this advancement? Do share in the comments!