Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei has said that the focus in artificial intellgience should be shifted to the use of AI during during a recent meeting.

“AI inventions may at most make one IT company successful, but applications can strengthen an entire nation,” he explained.

He illustrated this with examples: increasing coal washing precision by 0.1% multiplied by China’s 4 billion tons of coal output yields enormous value, and improving blast furnace iron production efficiency by 1% saves fuel in enormous quantities.

Huawei’s own AI efforts are fully centered on practical applications. Ren emphasized that the company’s research is “looking ahead 3–5 years.” Examples include using large AI models in blast furnaces to calculate furnace temperatures and predict silicon content in molten iron two hours in advance. AI can also be applied in mining, allowing operators to control machinery from the surface to avoid gas hazards and collapses. Additionally, AI is being deployed in healthcare, with existing examples including pathology models at Ruijin Hospital and remote ophthalmology diagnostics at Sun Yat-sen Medical University.