Huawei unveils latest AI model as ChatGPT boom rolls on

TAIPEI -- Huawei Technologies on Friday released a new version of its artificial intelligence model for cloud computing services, its latest move to keep up with the generative AI boom kicked off by ChatGPT even as the Chinese company struggles with a U.S. clampdown that limits its access to important computing hardware.

Huawei Cloud, the company's cloud computing solutions unit, said its AI model takes a different approach than Open AI's ChatGPT, a chatbot that answers questions and compiles humanlike responses to text prompts. Dubbed Pangu Model 3.0, the new offering is aimed at meeting the needs of specific industries and tackling problems in operations, product R&D and software engineering, according to the company.

Huawei unveiled the pre-trained AI model at its three-day conference for developers in Dongguan. The company said it intends to expand its AI-powered cloud services into new areas, including government, finance and manufacturing.

Zhang Ping'an, Huawei's executive director and CEO of Huawei Cloud Computing Technologies, said its AI model is based on its own hardware and platforms because the company does not have access to the same graphic processing units (GPUs) and software that other companies are using for powerful AI applications.

Zhang did not say why exactly Huawei does not have access to these things, but his comments were widely taken as a reference to U.S. restrictions on Huawei's access to American chips and software technologies. American chipmaker Nvidia provides the powerful GPUs behind ChatGPT and many other cutting-edge AI applications.

"Our AI platform ... can offer solid infrastructure ... as its computing power can reach 1.1 times that of mainstream GPUs," Zhang said. "If you can't buy the mainstream GPUs, you can now use Huawei's Ascend-powered AI cloud services, which will free you from the suffering of high-priced GPUs."

Though the Huawei aspect is not good news, the business use of AI is going to explode (is already growing extremely fast) because of the access to internal data it gives senior managers.

Obviously, these systems have to be trained and then tested to make sure they are reliable, but the potential for a senior manager to be able to have a deep knowledge of a company's operations at his fingertips is, well, powerful.

I have used AI systems that are available to the public to examine publically reported financial statements of companies and can personally attest to the increased analytical power these systems can give to investors. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that the potential is mindboggling.

What surprises me is how people who have never given AI systems (even the most basic ones) a test drive are so quick to dismiss them as nothing but a bunch of biased if advanced computer programs.

I have used ChatGPT and a couple of the image generators.

Either they are not that impressive or I am too stupid to effectively use them.

I have never been able to get it to produce an image that I have been trying to. I have never prompted it to write something that wasn’t obviously machine written and contained basic knowledge.

I have just been playing around with them. Maybe if I had an actual use for them and knew what I was doing I would have better luck.

So far, the only actual use I can see is for young people who were never taught in public schools how to write properly. My 21 year old son uses it when he wants to send out group email or text invitations or announcements and doesn’t want to sound stupid.

I could certainly see companies using it to quickly and easily create brochures or informational text.

What AI systems are you using that give you access to financial statements?

From my limited understanding, image manipulation is pretty advanced for the simpler Chatbots. Like you, I tried and got nowhere. That said, I'll bet there are some good instructional videos available online.

I have just used the regular non-subscription chatbots for analyzing financial statements, but they require a lot of work at getting the prompt wording correct.

One site that seems to offer a lot of promise is ChatPDF for obvious reasons...you can drop a pdf and then use prompts to ask the bot to analyze it.

Side note: On several occasions, I have had to define certain terms in my prompts to get good results. For example, when comparing Nvidia to AMD, I defined some of the financial statement terms so the bot knew they were the same thing.

I am definitely feeling my way along and often get the feeling that I am in over my head. But then I strike gold (or pewter, at least) and am encouraged to keep going.

One way the chatbots have been tremendously helpful is in providing Visual Basics for Apps routines that I can use in data downloaded into Excel.

For years I have used Excel to compare stock movements and financial statements. Writing routines for that has always been very time-consuming. With the chatbots, I just describe (very carefully and in great detail) what I am doing and it provides the formulas and routines that I need (and even helps in debugging them). This process has shaved a massive amount of time. Frankly, it makes number crunching so easy I am only limited by my imagination.

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