Junichi Miyagawa, Representative Director and President
SoftBank held its largest corporate event, “SoftBank World 2024.” In his keynote speech at the event, President and Representative Director Junichi Miyagawa called on corporate executives and others to utilize AI as a “new management resource.”
Britain missed the industrial revolution
Mr. Miyagawa first presented a photo. It depicts a scene in England in the late 19th century, where a person is leading a car on foot. This was due to the “Red Flag Law,” a law at the time that required guidance by a driver holding a red flag when traveling by car. At that time, horse-drawn carriages were the main means of transportation, and it is said that the law was enacted out of people’s fear that their jobs would be taken away by trains and steam engines, and it suppressed the spread of automobiles.
On the other hand, cars were driving freely in France, and British people who saw this scene became alarmed and started a movement to abolish the Red Flag Law. In particular, when Charles Stuart Rolls, the founder of Rolls-Royce, drove over the speed limit, citizens became aware of the potential of automobiles, and red flag laws were abolished.
Britain was the birthplace of the steam engine and was the center of world industry at the time, but although it was eventually abolished, its industrial development was hampered by laws such as the Red Flag Act. .
On the other hand, Mr. Miyagawa pointed out, “Even in modern times, the same thing that happened back then is occurring.” The field of generative AI continues to evolve at a speed that exceeds Moore’s law, and he says that the realization of “AGI,” which rivals the processing power of the human brain, “will appear in the not-too-distant future.”
Mr. Miyagawa cites the history of OpenAI as evidence for this.
GPT-3.5, which was released in January 2022, supports text generation, and has since supported image, video, and audio generation. And with OpenAI o1 announced in September, it is now possible to acquire advanced reasoning abilities that enable human-like thinking. The period so far has been just under two years. The evolution of voice generation AI from GPT-4o to OpenAI o1, which supports voice generation, took four months, and the evolution of voice generation AI is progressing at an accelerated pace. The human brain is said to have a performance index of 10 to 100 yotas (10 to the 24th power), and the latest AI models have abilities comparable to this.
Mr. Miyagawa also cited intelligence quotient (IQ) as an explanation. GPT-4o is around 80, but OpenAI o1, which appeared less than half a year later, has improved to 120. If evolution continues at this pace, within a few months to a year, humans could evolve to a level equivalent to the top 1% of humanity. Mr. Miyagawa says that in the near future, AI may make it possible to become an Einstein-level genius, who is said to be one in 800 million people, and a Leonardo da Vinci-level genius, who is said to be one in 60 billion people. .
See the evolution of AI as an opportunity
Japanese companies have been losing their markets to the rest of the world. For example, products and services that have become commonplace today, such as smartphones that appeared in the era when feature phones were at their peak, and cloud computing that appeared when on-premises was the mainstream, but Japanese companies have lagged behind in these developments, The forces are gaining the upper hand.
In Japan, where the working population is decreasing, if productivity per worker remains unchanged, GDP will decrease by 110 trillion yen in 2040 from the current level. If AI is used to improve business efficiency, it will be possible to maintain the 2023 level, but if it is used to create new value and double productivity, Japan’s GDP will reach 1,000 trillion yen in 2040.
Mr. Miyagawa states that “the evolution of AI is a future that cannot be avoided,” and says that companies should actively utilize AI at an early stage and become involved in creating new jobs.
Mr. Miyagawa
SoftBank Group is also creating new value using AI. For example, in our call center, we are working to connect AI and data to create a “call center that doesn’t leave users waiting,” and we are also working on a PayPay initiative that automatically detects special fraud and prevents damage.
In addition, we are focusing on building communication infrastructure that will become the foundation of an AI society, and by installing MEC servers at base stations to provide calculation functions and strengthening optical fiber networks, we will We are increasing our ability to support “AI traffic.”
Mr. Miyagawa said, “The evolution of AI is inevitable in most industries,” and commented, “I believe that a society that coexists with AI is a desirable society for people and companies.” They concluded that they would do their best to advance AI technology for the future of Japan.
