Japan needs computing power surge to stay in AI race, says govt adviser (updated)
19/07/2023 11:02
(Adds details of EU's lobbying on AI)
By Tim Kelly and Sam Nussey
TOKYO, July 19 (Reuters) - Japan needs to rapidly expand
computing power as it vies to become a global leader in
artificial intelligence, said Hideki Murai, a special AI adviser
to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
"The government's key priority is computing power. We feel a
real sense of crisis about that," Murai, a ruling Liberal
Democratic Party lawmaker who heads the government's AI strategy
team, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. "We want to
create the foundations for an AI era," he added.
Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has been slow to
invest in the field, and lags the United States in AI computer
infrastructure. Some 3,000 companies in Japan have access to a
supercomputer at the government's National Institute of Advanced
Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) offering 0.8 exaflops
of computing power.
That is less than a tenth of what Microsoft-backed OpenAI
had access to when it created the popular chatbot ChatGPT,
according to Japan's Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry.
One exaflop is equivalent to 1 quintillion - or
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - calculations per second.
To begin addressing that deficit, Japan plans to increase
the computing power at AIST to 2.8 exaflops by the end of 2024,
Murai said, and is providing subsidies to companies such as
Sakura Internet 3778.T and SoftBank Corp 9434.T to build
supercomputers.
The Japanese government can also provide data to train AIs,
but will leave it to businesses to create the AI models that
Kishida's government hopes will drive innovation, said Murai,
who likened the strategy to how Japan nurtured Major League
baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani.
"Ten years ago, people would have scoffed about the idea of
a player such as Ohtani in the Major League and that's why we
are working hard to create an environment that will allow
someone like him to emerge in the AI field," he said.
As Japan considers how best to take advantage of AI, it and
other members of the Group of Seven industrial democracies are
wrestling with how to mitigate the potential social and economic
disruption it may also cause.
"There may be differences in thinking and policy around AI
between G7 countries, but we are working together to reduce the
distance between those as much as possible," he said.
Japan is leaning towards softer AI rules than the European
Union, which has launched an effort to convince Asian countries
to follow its lead on AI with stringent requirements including
that tech firms disclose copyrighted material used to generate
AI content, Reuters has reported.
The EU aims for its proposed AI Act to become a global
benchmark on the booming technology the way its data protection
laws have helped shape global privacy standards.
(Reporting by Tim Kelly, Sam Nussey and Miho Uranaka; Editing
by Sam Holmes)
((tim.kelly@tr.com;))