On April 8, Tencent released the 2023 ESG (namely "Environment, Society and Governance") report. It is noteworthy that in 2023, the Standard & Poor’s Global Sustainability Assessment improved the ESG score of Tencent Holdings (00700.HK), making it ranked in the top five in the industry, surpassing Google and Meta.
“Digital technology and artificial intelligence are the core competitiveness of Tencent to achieve sustainable development.Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, said in the report that advanced technology is the foundation for Tencent to create user value, commercial value and innovative social value.
In the past year, Tencent has made many innovative explorations in various fields of ESG. In terms of environmental protection, we will continue to promote the goal of carbon neutrality, greatly increase the proportion of renewable energy, and continue to carry out biodiversity protection actions based on technology; In terms of social value innovation, actively promote the construction of barrier-free environment and apply digital technology to medical care, education, emergency support and other fields; In terms of technical security, Tencent has long invested in research and development while focusing on strengthening AI systems and data security; In terms of improving governance capacity, Tencent joined the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in 2023 and actively promoted the green transformation of the supply chain.
Based on the above practices, in December last year, Standard & Poor’s Global also included Tencent in its Dow Jones Sustainable Development World Index and Emerging Markets Index, which also reflected that the effectiveness of Tencent’s ESG management was widely recognized by the capital market.
Core product "barrier-free+"
People with hearing impairment can also listen to music well.
"Technology is people-oriented." Tencent emphasized in the report that it will continue to promote digital technology innovation and ease social pain points by exploring innovative paths. As one of the earliest technology companies to develop information accessibility, Tencent has invested a lot of technical strength to help people with disabilities cross the digital divide and better integrate into social daily life.
By the end of 2023, Tencent has applied for more than 80 barrier-free patents, involving more than 40 products and functions, and its core products have been optimized for barrier-free. Tencent also opened four patents related to accessibility to the society, which promoted the common progress of the industry in the field of information accessibility. Among them, in 2023, Tencent and China Disabled Persons’ Federation jointly established a barrier-free joint innovation lab to help build a barrier-free environment and support people with physical disabilities and silver-haired people to participate in social life and economic activities on an equal footing.
Tencent used the game vibration tactile feedback system developed in Peace Elite to help visually impaired people better interact with touch-screen mobile phones, including creating a six-point Braille vibration solution with partners, and further applying it in sogou input method, Tencent map, Tianqi chess and other products. Take Tencent Map as an example. When visually impaired people go off-course, the functions of "Walking Navigation Route Deviation Correction Function" and "Bus and Subway Navigation Vibration Reminder" will remind visually impaired users of the degree of deviation from the original route with different degrees of vibration feedback through vibration reminder and voice broadcast.
In solving the problem of hearing impairment, in 2023, Teana Action further launched the "Tencent Teana Remote Listening Service Platform", relying on Tencent.Teana audio AI technology enables hearing-impaired people to complete the remote fitting of hearing AIDS at home through Tencent conference, which helps to improve the imbalance of fitting resources between regions and accelerate the popularization of hearing AIDS. At the same time, QQ music uses techniques such as sound companion separation, artificial intelligence music generation, accompaniment adaptation, etc., without destroying or changing the melody of the original song, so that people with medium and high frequency hearing loss can also hear the song and enjoy the integrity and beauty of the music.
In terms of supporting the digital rights and interests of people with physical disabilities, Tencent has also introduced several solutions based on technologies such as voice-text conversion, OCR image reading, eye movement input, etc. Users with physical disabilities can operate computers to complete input through eye movement and gaze. For individual businesses with physical disabilities, Tencent has also launched a series of support measures, including digital business training, giving barrier-free business tools, exclusive free insurance and exclusive customer service.
100,000 women benefit.
Screening for two cancers entered 13 low-resource areas.
While paying attention to the barrier-free protection for the disadvantaged, the report also mentions solutions to other social problems. In terms of digital medical care, Tencent continues to explore the development of inclusive medical care. Based on medical image AI  With the accumulation of identification and processing technology, Tencent has developed a "medical imaging platform for finding shadows and intelligence" and a number of auxiliary diagnosis systems, which have supported the inclusive large-scale screening and timely treatment of some diseases at the social level.
Advanced auxiliary diagnosis technology effectively reduces the cost of large-scale screening and diagnosis and treatment of some diseases. Taking cervical cancer and breast cancer as examples, with the help of AI-assisted diagnosis and other technologies, in 2023, we invested resources to help carry out large-scale screening and diagnosis of "two cancers" for about 100,000 school-age women in 13 pilot areas with low medical resources. In addition, "glaucoma AI-assisted diagnosis" identifies the risk of suspected glaucoma-like fundus manifestations by learning and analyzing tens of thousands of fundus photo data. In clinical experiments, the software significantly reduces the average detection time cost, effectively reduces the missed diagnosis rate of glaucoma by 20%, and reduces the misdiagnosis rate by 2%, which provides an effective and fast way for glaucoma screening.
In addition, in 2023, Tencent released a large medical model based on the self-developed basic model "Tencent Mixed Element", which can be applied to the multi-scene product matrix such as intelligent question and answer, family doctor assistant, digital medical imaging platform, etc. These products can be embedded in the whole process of medical treatment, and help improve the level and quality of medical services in application scenarios such as department guidance, doctor recommendation, pre-consultation, doctor-patient dialogue, automatic medical record generation and intelligent hospital customer service.
At the same time, in the face of sudden disasters, Tencent also helps social organizations to build a basic platform for disaster emergency rescue and a disaster early warning platform with information technology capabilities, and works together in earthquake early warning, snowstorm rescue and AED rescue to help improve the success rate of emergency support. Among them, Tencent and Sichuan Earthquake Administration launched the WeChat earthquake warning function, and quickly pushed the earthquake warning through WeChat, so that everyone can receive accurate earthquake warning information in time, quickly avoid risks and effectively deal with natural disasters.
In terms of digital public welfare, relying on digital technology and transparent and credible mechanism, Tencent public welfare platform continuously improves donor services and strengthens "transparent" public welfare. Take the 9-year-old "99 Public Welfare Day" as an example. In 2023 alone, more than 65 million people donated more than 3.8 billion donations.
First launch of "natural risk assessment"
AI energy-saving module helps energy-saving optimization
In addition to showing concern for "people", the report also mentions the protection of "nature".
"We continue to promote the carbon-neutral plan and achieve emission reduction through energy management. Our fourth-generation data center technology T-block can improve the energy efficiency of data centers, and at the same time, we promote the transformation of renewable energy from operation and maintenance electricity. " James Mitchel and Luo Shuohan, co-chairs of ESG Working Group, said that in 2023, the proportion of using renewable electricity increased from 7.2% in 2022 to 12.4%. This is due to the increase in the installed capacity of self-built renewable energy facilities to 52.2 MW, and the purchase of renewable electricity has also increased to 600 million kWh, an increase of 166.3% and 79.6% respectively compared with 2022.
In terms of energy saving, AI also has a new role. Relying on the AI algorithm model, by integrating the changes of IT data, terminal environment data and outdoor weather data, the operation of each equipment is optimized, so as to realize the overall energy-saving optimization under the premise of meeting the refrigeration demand. Applying AI adjustment optimization technology can effectively reduce the PUE of data center modules. In 2023, we further expanded the application scope of AI regulation optimization technology. In 2023, the newly applied modules will reduce electricity consumption by about 5,000 MWh and avoid carbon emissions of 2,851.5 tons.
In terms of ecological protection,In 2023, Tencent launched "Natural Risk Assessment" for the first time.To analyze the impact, dependence, risks and opportunities of the company’s business operations on nature and biodiversity, as an important reference for the company to plan its future actions. In addition, Tencent’s "Bird Watching Jun" WeChat applet contains a database of 1,500 species of birds, tracks the location and migration path of birds with the help of GPS and AI image recognition technologies, and encourages the public to take and upload pictures when they find migratory birds, thus providing help for scientific research institutions to study bird migration.
As the saying goes, "Everyone gathers firewood with a high flame", and Tencent also develops green with its friends. In 2023, Tencent promoted the green transformation of the supply chain, including incorporating environmental compliance into the supplier evaluation process, promoting suppliers to use green electricity, and promoting the intelligent and low-carbon operation and maintenance technology of data centers to partners to jointly protect green mountains and green rivers.
Manage the "double-edged sword" of technology
AI development has done something, and it has done something wrong.
Technology is a double-edged sword. Especially under the industrial wave of generative artificial intelligence, Tencent has its own thoughts on how to make technology more "good"."Our technical and business teams will make good decisions before investing resources, and clarify’ doing something’ and’ not doing something’ to implement the mission vision of’ science and technology are good’." Ma Huateng said in the report.
To this end, Tencent is highly concerned about prejudice, discrimination, privacy, abuse, ethics, values and other issues in the field of artificial intelligence, and follows the principles of "knowability", "controllability", "availability" and "reliability" to set up an AI technical committee. The areas of concern include but are not limited toAI big model、Natural language processing (NLP), optical character recognition (OCR), image recognition, recommendation algorithm, deep learning training and reasoning.In addition, data processing requirements related to artificial intelligence are also added in relevant specifications to ensure that comprehensive data control can be implemented, the principle of safety compliance can be adhered to, and a trusted AI system can be built to ensure the healthy development of technology and the protection of user privacy.
At the same time, by the end of 2023, Tencent had obtained more than 3,600 authorized patents to protect users’ digital rights. With the extensive and in-depth application of AI in social, advertising, games and other products and services, Tencent has further strengthened the management and control of third-party data processing, and completed the technical upgrade of network security protection capabilities such as zero trust, API security, honeypot service and threat intelligence, forming an active defense security capability system of "intelligence-attack and defense-management-planning". In addition, Tencent Cloud will also open some basic security capabilities to SMEs for free.