“Japan, wake up!”: Masayoshi Son, CEO of Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group, on Wednesday called on the country to decisively adopt artificial intelligence (AI), without which it risks becoming a “fish in the glass”.
“Our future will be determined by our rejection or our resolute adoption of AI,” we must decide: “grab it or stay behind, whether we want to be a goldfish or not,” Mr. Son explained during an event organized by SoftBank Group in Tokyo and also broadcast online.
Because AI will make such great progress that in 20 years its lead over human intelligence will be comparable to the gap between a human and a goldfish, he said.
Mr. Son lamented the fact that many Japanese companies are still hesitant to use generative AI tools such as the very popular American software ChatGPT, if not downright hostile to them.
“Japan, wake up!” he said again, estimating that the country’s economy has already lost three decades because it neglected the digital revolution.
This was Masayoshi Son’s first public speech since the mega launch on the New York Stock Exchange of Arm, a British subsidiary of SoftBank Group that specializes in microprocessor architectures and aims to play a major role in AI in the future.
But after a euphoric first trading session in which Arm rose 25%, the stock has now all but given up its initial gains.
Nevertheless, this operation increased SoftBank Group’s financial resources, which it could use to invest extensively in the field of artificial intelligence.
Its telecommunications subsidiary in Japan, SoftBank Corp, is already working with OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, to offer generative AI solutions to companies in the country.