A world where people live forever, dead relatives linger on in computers and robots try to kill humans is what Chinese technology giant Huawei is preparing for.

The world’s largest producers of broadband network equipment and smartphones are what Huawei is best known for. But the company used science fiction movies like “The Matrix” to envision future trends and new business ideas, said Kevin Ho, president of its handset product line, at the CES Asia conference in Shanghai on Wednesday.

“Hunger, poverty, disease or even death may not be a problem by 2035, or 25 years from now. In the future you may be able to purchase computing capacity to serve as a surrogate, to pass the baton from the physical world to the digital world,” he said.

Thanks to the ability to download human consciousness into computers, he described a future where children could use apps like WeChat to interact with dead grandparents. Business for Huawei would be generated because all of these technologies would require huge amounts of data storage, he added.

A scene in “The Matrix” where a character downloads the ability to fly a helicopter was also referred to by Ho.

“That kind of data download volume exceeds current levels. In the future storage will need to exceed 15,000 Zettabytes so this is a huge increase,” he said.

While Calico and venture capitalist Peter Thiel have both raised the prospect of immortality, in Silicon Valley, high-tech companies like Google have discussed long-term planning for a post-human society. The goal of transporting humanity to colonies on other planets has been long held by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

But business preparations based on the intangible possibilities facing the species is something that is rare to be seen from established Chinese technology firms like Huawei. Science fiction films helped spur his team to consider new product lines, Ho said.

“A lot of science fiction has prompted me to have this type of thinking – in science fiction we’ve seen some terrible worlds where technology destroys human society,” he said.

A character — apparently an AI persona — absorbs ideas from books then launches an attack on humanity in a film was described by Ho.

“There’s a very interesting film where Mr Wong has a task of downloading books, he also has a task of printing books and later he kills human beings. Therefore we need better safety technology. We need authentication, better tech protection and remote defense – we are developing all of these now,” said Ho.

(Adapted from Bloomberg)