In the context of the acceleration of a new round of global scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, artificial intelligence is profoundly changing our work and lifestyle. At the MWC Shanghai Mobile Broadband Forum 2025, Wang Tao, Executive Director of Huawei, predicts that by 2030, as many as 3 billion AI robots will be deployed around the world, covering multiple scenarios such as factory manufacturing and home services. This prediction shook the industry and sparked an in-depth discussion on the development trend, industry opportunities and potential risks of AI robots.
Ⅰ Technology evolution: 5G-A and generative AI work together to build a "smart base".
The reason why AI robots are about to enter an explosive period comes from the two-wheel drive of communication technology and artificial intelligence algorithms.
On the one hand, 5G Advanced (5G-A) provides a high-speed, low-latency, and highly reliable communication environment for AI robots. According to Huawei's official information, by 2025, more than 50 5G-A commercial networks will be deployed around the world, covering more than 300 cities, and the terminal types will extend from mobile phones to CPE, IoT devices, and AI robot terminals. This means that AI robots will gain unprecedented capabilities in network connectivity, real-time control, and remote operation and maintenance.
On the other hand, the leap in AI model capabilities has significantly enhanced the intelligence level of robots. As of the first quarter of 2025, the cumulative global shipment of AI mobile phones will reach 360 million units, of which 70% have AI-native capabilities. The average daily scale of generative AI tokens has exceeded 10 trillion, a year-on-year increase of nearly 1,000 times, and almost all top 100 mobile applications have integrated AI generation functions, widely penetrating social networking, education, entertainment and other scenarios. This role shift from "tool" to "partner" has created a foundation for AI robots to implant humanoid perception and decision-making systems.
Ⅱ Industrial upgrading: robots reshape the underlying logic of the manufacturing industry
In the factory scenario, AI robots not only replace manual labor, but also profoundly change the manufacturing process.
In automobile manufacturing, for example, traditional production lines often face efficiency bottlenecks and quality fluctuations. After the introduction of AI robots, the level of automation in welding, assembly, inspection and other links has been significantly improved. For example, with the help of multi-modal sensors and deep learning algorithms, the welding accuracy of the AI welding robot deployed by a leading OEM can be controlled at ±0.5mm, the production efficiency is increased by more than 40%, and the product yield is significantly improved.
More importantly, AI robots have self-learning and data closed-loop capabilities, which can optimize path planning, predict equipment failures, and dynamically adjust capacity allocation during operation, thereby promoting the transformation of the manufacturing industry to flexible, lean, and efficient.
According to the statistics of the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), global industrial robot shipments will reach 531,000 units in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 6%, and automobile manufacturing is still the largest application field, accounting for more than 30%. In the future, driven by the continuous improvement of AI chip performance and cost reduction, AI robots will be implemented in more industries such as electronics, home appliances, machinery, and logistics, forming a trillion-level market.
Figure: Huawei's Wang Tao predicts that 3 billion AI robots will be deployed globally by 2030
Ⅲ Home Assistant: Evolved from a "smart speaker" to a "life butler".
Different from industrial scenarios, home AI robots emphasize human-computer interaction, emotion recognition, and life companionship.
At present, home AI devices have gradually evolved from smart speakers and sweeping robots to "all-round assistants" with higher autonomy. For example, a brand of home robots not only supports voice commands and remote video monitoring, but also realizes functions such as health monitoring, dietary advice, and elderly companionship, becoming an important node for family members' emotional links.
Tractica, a market research firm, predicts that the global home robot market will reach about 132 billion yuan (about 19 billion US dollars) by 2030, with an average annual compound growth rate of more than 20%. From the perspective of user experience, home AI robots need to integrate multi-dimensional capabilities such as speech recognition, visual recognition, emotion perception, and behavior prediction, which are inseparable from the support of high-performance chips, low-power sensors, and safe and reliable edge computing architectures.
Ⅳ Risks and Challenges: Deep Thinking Behind AI "Occupation".
Although AI robots represent the future trend, their rapid expansion has also raised a series of social, technical and ethical issues, which urgently need the attention and response of the whole society.
1. The pressure to reshape the employment structure has intensified
A large number of low-skilled, repetitive jobs may be replaced by AI robots. According to Oxford Economics, 20 million manufacturing jobs worldwide could be replaced by robots by 2030. This will exacerbate the pressure to transform the labour market and force workers to migrate to more skilled and creative jobs. Therefore, the education system, vocational training institutions and enterprises need to strengthen skills retraining and employment support, and establish a "human-machine symbiosis" talent system.
2. Data privacy and cyber security risks are on the rise
AI robots widely collect sensitive data such as environment, voice, and images in factories and homes, and if they lack an effective protection mechanism, they can easily become the entrance to information leakage and cyber attacks. In 2023, it was revealed that a smart camera leaked home videos due to a vulnerability, causing strong public concern. This requires strengthening the deployment of privacy-preserving computing, secure encryption, and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) from the underlying chip to the system platform, and building a full-lifecycle security framework for AI robots.
3. The lack of ethical rules is controversial
The increased autonomy of AI robots has also brought about the problem of blurring the "boundary between rights and responsibilities". For example, when a robot misjudges in the process of caring for the elderly or driving assistance, how should the responsibility be delineated? Do machines have "moral choice"? At present, there is no unified norm in the world. In order to avoid the phenomenon of "technology first, ethics lagging", it is necessary to promote international collaboration and formulation of AI ethical standards as soon as possible, and establish a "human-led, AI-assisted" governance framework.
Ⅴ Strategic Thinking of Semiconductor Enterprises: A Comprehensive Upgrade from Computing Power to Perception
The large-scale popularization of AI robots is both an opportunity and a challenge for the semiconductor industry. Key components include:
* AI chips: high-performance computing and inference accelerators to promote the evolution of the "brain" of robots;
* Sensors: multi-modal perception devices such as image, pressure, temperature, and inertial navigation are the core of the robot's "senses";
*Communication module: low-power, high-bandwidth module supports efficient interconnection between edge and cloud;
* Power management chip: ensure the stable operation of the robot under high-intensity tasks and prolong the battery life.
In the next five years, the requirements for AI robots in terms of computing power density, energy efficiency ratio, and system integration will continue to increase, driving semiconductor manufacturers to accelerate their deployment in cutting-edge fields such as advanced technology, heterogeneous integration, and brain-like architecture.
Ⅵ Conclusion: Cautiously optimistic to welcome the "AI robot era".
Huawei's proposal that 3 billion AI robots will enter human life by 2030 is not a far-fetched "science fiction script", but an inevitable result of the joint evolution of the industrial technology chain, application ecological chain, and social system chain.
For China's semiconductor industry, this is a strategic opportunity battle related to the global position in the next decade. Under the multiple advantages of policy support, talent accumulation, and manufacturing advantages, domestic chip manufacturers should accelerate the construction of closed-loop capabilities from "underlying core devices" to "system-level solutions", and grasp the new dividends in the era of AI robots.
At the same time, the whole society must face up to the employment impact and ethical controversy brought about by robots. Only driven by technological innovation and institutional guarantees, can AI robots truly become the boosters of human development, rather than a new source of uncertain risk.
In this profound wave of technology, only by seizing the opportunity and responding rationally can we build a smart future where people and intelligent robots coexist in synergy.
