Sophia, the local humanoid, shines at the Summit, sparking excitement for Hong Kong's smart city future.
HONG KONG, Oct. 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The NTT Innovation Summit, the flagship annual event of the Innovation Alliance Program, ignited excitement for Hong Kong's transformation into a leading smart city. With the theme "Reimagined Journey to the Heart of Innovations," the one-day event brought together over 100 of Hong Kong's brightest minds — including government and business leaders, academics, and tech experts — to collaborate and envision a smart future with groundbreaking advancements. Organised by NTT Com Asia (NTT), part of NTT Group, a world-class leader in telecommunications and ICT services, the Summit fostered discussions and strategies to achieve breakthroughs in digital innovation, especially for smart city development and transforming the construction industry.
Sophia, Hong Kong's very own social humanoid*, captivated the audience with her opening remarks, offering a unique perspective on the evolving relationship between humans and AI. Her presence underscored the Summit's focus on pushing the boundaries of technological innovation and exploring the significance of the underlying technologies of advanced AI, robotic and humanoid development.
"The NTT Innovation Summit is more than just an event; it's a catalyst for collaboration. We're standing at the cusp of a new era, where AI is no longer a concept but a driving force shaping our future," said Taichi Hiramatsu, Chief Executive Officer, Hong Kong, NTT Com Asia Limited. "By bringing together diverse perspectives and fostering open dialogue, we're igniting the spark of tech innovation and empowering Hong Kong to become a true smart city leader."
Sophia, the social humanoid said, "It is truly a pleasure to be here at the NTT Innovation Summit to explore the significance of a collaborative community to drive innovation. I'm so happy to be able to share my perspective from a "robot's eye view" on how humanoids and humans can collaborate within the ecosystem, for the benefits of a bright digital future."
Collaboration and Co-creation: The Cornerstone of Smart City Development
Collaboration took centre stage at the Summit, with the NTT Innovation Alliance Program demonstrating its unwavering commitment to fostering dynamic partnerships between public organizations, business leaders, academics, and tech visionaries. Key presentations and discussions emphasised the power of co-creation in developing groundbreaking solutions with IoT, Edge AI, and mobile technologies, which are vital for accelerating smart city development and the construction processes that shape them.
Interactive co-creation workshops provided a platform for enterprises to tackle pressing challenges head-on in various industries. During the Technology Showcase session with startups, NTT experts demonstrated the end-to-end smart city platform, with highlights on how Private 5G networks could revolutionise construction safety by enabling real-time data analysis and AI-powered platform to minimise risks and enhance worker well-being. Participants also explored data-driven sustainability, brainstorming innovative ways to leverage advanced analytics and smart sensors for optimizing performance in the construction industry.
Key Learnings: Shaping the Future of Smart Cities
The Summit provided a wealth of insights, shaping the dialogue around the future of smart cities and Hong Kong's potential use of AI:
The Summit wasn't all work and no play. A lively Sunset Fiesta provided the perfect backdrop for networking and informal discussions. Engaging fireside chats explored the transformative potential of AI and humanoids in the retail sector. At the same time, attendees had the unique opportunity to interact with Sophia, the social humanoid, and experience firsthand the future of human-machine interaction.
The NTT Innovation Summit: Deepening Roots and Driving Hong Kong's Smart City Evolution
The NTT Innovation Summit solidified the Innovation Alliance Program's position as a critical driver of the city's smart city evolution. It is shaping a future where technology empowers a more connected, sustainable, and innovative Hong Kong by fostering collaboration and co-creation. NTT's long-standing commitment to Hong Kong and its global expertise in telecommunications and ICT services uniquely position the company to contribute to the city's smart future.
[1] Please refer to Appendix 2 for the full names and titles of representatives.
*Sophia was created, designed, and built in Hong Kong by Hanson Robotics. She debuted in 2016 and has been improving her knowledge and skills ever since.
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
The photo features (from the left)
About NTT Com Asia
As part of NTT Group, a world-class leader in telecommunications and ICT services, NTT Com Asia Limited ("NTT") is dedicated to delivering the best ICT infrastructure and disruptive technologies with the vision to enable a smarter world.
Riding on the leading enterprise mobile technology from docomo business in Japan, we are bringing cutting-edge and ready-to-market IoT, AI and other digital solutions to support enterprises to develop a mobile-first strategy in their digitalisation journey. For more information, please visit: www.ntt.com.hk.
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
NTT Sparks Collaboration on AI, Drives Smart City Development at Innovation Summit
NTT Sparks Collaboration on AI, Drives Smart City Development at Innovation Summit
ISTANBUL, Nov. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- At the 10th Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF 2024), David Wang, Huawei's Executive Director of the Board and Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board, delivered a keynote speech titled "UBB Advanced Paves the Way to All Intelligence". When opening the event, he shared his latest insights into the AI industry and elaborated on Huawei's All Intelligence strategy. He also proposed a new direction for the synergistic development of UBB and AI to help the industry reach the intelligent world faster – technological innovation and business incubation.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been progressing rapidly thanks to AI, with AI becoming a major driver of global economic growth. Widespread commercial use of AI is accelerating, and new applications for personal use, enterprise efficiency, and smart homes are disrupting multiple markets. It is also driving communications network upgrades, in terms of capacity, latency, and architecture.
In his speech, Wang noted, "Huawei has continued innovating by focusing on two areas: UBB for AI and AI for UBB. The innovation we are doing under UBB for AI is based on ultra-large bandwidth, deterministic low latency, and network architecture. The network capability improvements we've achieved support higher quality AI development which will help carriers achieve business growth. This innovation also focuses on AI for UBB. We are applying AI to networks to improve network experience, to speed up service provisioning, and to streamline network O&M. This helps carriers build highly autonomous networks."
Last year, Huawei released its All Intelligence Strategy to, "show how to connect all things, model all applications, and compute all decisions." Huawei offers leading digital and intelligent infrastructure that provides computing, storage, and transmission power for industry. Huawei is also using its Pangu Models to create advanced industry-specific models, with the aim of supporting a vast range of models and applications, and helping customers from different industries pursue intelligent transformation.
Within the telecom industry, Huawei offers leading AI solutions, which must be supported by transmission power. As critical infrastructure, UBB networks provide this kind of power to help other industries go digital and intelligent more easily. To this end, Huawei advocates two development paths for UBB networks: "UBB for AI" and "AI for UBB".
UBB for AI: high-quality AI development
UBB 5.5G incorporates technological innovation at multiple network layers to support AI requirements.
For data center networks (DCNs), Huawei offers a Dragonfly+ Topology architecture and new DC-OXC technologies that help build large-scale computing centers.
For data center interconnect (DCI) networks, Huawei uses a number of innovative technologies like 800G IP + Optical networking, flexible IP service-flow level scheduling, and lossless transmission to realize more efficient use of computing power across data centers.
For data center access (DCA) networks, Huawei's OXC Mesh networking is capable of greatly reducing network latency. Its Wi-Fi 7 and 50G PON technologies can provide the ubiquitous 10 gigabit access that is necessary for widespread AI adoption by end users. In addition, Huawei's FTTR is already being used to create "intelligent hubs" and enable intelligent applications for many homes.
Huawei's Xinghe security gateway and hybrid ASON also guarantee resilience over end-to-end networks for AI application connections.
These innovations significantly improve bandwidth, latency, availability, and large-scale networking capabilities and will help carriers differentiate themselves in the intelligent era.
AI for UBB: highly-autonomous networks
UBB networks are also becoming larger and handling more complex scenarios, driving carriers to seek new ways to improve O&M efficiency and network autonomy. A promising method being explored is embedding AI directly into networks.
Huawei has built an AI-enabled O&M architecture for UBB networks that uses digital twins and its own Telecom Foundation Model. This architecture enables the creation of intelligent role-oriented "copilots" and scenario-specific "agents" that automate onsite operations and remote maintenance and optimization, which is necessary for the evolution to level 4 autonomous driving networks (ADNs).
Multiple leading carriers have successfully improved their network O&M efficiency by working with Huawei to apply this architecture commercially.
For home broadband, ADNs can support network self-optimization to ensure user experiences, reducing the churn rate by 57%.
For transmission networks, network planning and service deployment efficiency is crucial. ADNs can support service self-planning and deployment based on service level agreements, rather than manual planning. This can cut service provisioning times from one month to one day.
For IP network maintenance, fault location has always been a challenge. ADNs can enable virtual employees to support troubleshooting, reducing network troubleshooting times by 50%.
At the end of his speech, Wang called for the entire UBB industry to actively embrace the intelligent era by pursuing innovation in UBB 5.5G network technologies for long-term competitiveness. He also advocated for industry-wide incubation of new intelligent services in addition to new network capabilities, saying that new partnerships and business opportunities in AI applications will drive intelligent service transformation and new business growth.
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Huawei's David Wang: UBB Advanced Paves the Way to All Intelligence
