Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” mantra propelled tech innovation for the Internet age. In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), it should take a leaf out of Japan’s playbook and slow down.
A rush to deploy AI tools to the public has resulted in embarrassing blunders, from an AI-powered Google search feature recently recommending glue on pizza, to consequences that can impact real people’s livelihoods, like the technology behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT showing signs of racial bias when ranking job applicants, as a Bloomberg analysis found.
It has also led to tech companies consuming enormous amounts of energy to power AI. The International Energy Agency estimates that the total electricity consumption for data centers across the globe would be about the same as the power demand of Japan in 2026. Other forecasters say that by 2030, these centers are on course to use more energy than India, the world’s most populous country. Large language models, the technology underpinning the latest crop of generative AI tools, require gargantuan troves of data and training them takes immense amounts of computing power and energy.
Illustration: Yusha
As the tech continues to develop, many AI firms think the key to growth is to make these large language models even larger. Some US tech titans including Microsoft Corp cofounder Bill Gates and OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman are even backing nuclear energy firms to help power AI data centers. However, there are other options beyond rushing to fire up new nuclear reactors to train AI models.
Tokyo-based startup Sakana AI — which Nikkei Asia reported on June 15 would become the fastest-ever Japanese company to achieve unicorn status — has taken a different approach. When it comes to the most consequential technology of our time, they are playing the long game.
“Sakana,” which means “fish” in Japanese, was created last year by David Ha, Ren Ito and Llion Jones with the goal of applying nature-inspired ideas such as evolution and collective intelligence to create AI models, and not gobbling up as much energy as possible to train a single AI model. Jones, notably, coauthored the seminal 2017 research paper while at Google that underpins the technology of today’s most popular AI products, including ChatGPT, and spurred much of the current boom.
Ha told me that much of the issues facing AI stem from companies prematurely deploying the technology in search of short-term profits, while disregarding the high energy toll. While Sakana’s technology could be used to create a virtual girlfriend chatbot now, they are more focused on researching ways to apply AI to solve real-world issues. This is in line with other Japan-based AI companies the West might have never heard of, such as Preferred Networks, which is trying to develop more energy-efficient AI chips.
Silicon Valley needs to start playing the more long game, too. The world does not need more useless chatbots that generate bad poetry — or perpetuate racist biases at scale — while consuming unsustainable swaths of resources. This way of thinking could have also spared some of the embarrassing headlines that have turned much of the public against embracing AI for good.
Sakana’s most recent research is looking at new ways of producing AI models that do not require extensive amounts of energy, and it has longer-term ambitions of helping Japan at a national scale come up with real solutions to some of its most pressing issues, including a looming labor crunch. Their mission has received support from the Japanese government.
In Japan, depopulation and a shrinking workforce have led to a public and private sector ecosystem that seeks to embrace the emerging technology’s possibilities with curiosity and hope instead of despair. There is a sense of urgency around the idea that these tools can help solve labor shortages — with less of the existential fears that they would end up replacing human workers. Microsoft Japan president Miki Tsusaka touted generative AI’s power to accelerate growth in a nation with an aging population in an interview with Bloomberg TV last week. Her comments come on the heels of Microsoft announcing it would spend about US$2.9 billion, its biggest-ever investment in Japan, to increase cloud computing and AI infrastructure.
Being a close US ally has also helped Japan in the current boom — it has welcomed a spate of US tech investment that might have previously been funneled toward China.
Along with Microsoft, OpenAI opened its first Asia office in Tokyo this spring, while Oracle Corp pledged to put more than US$8 billion over the next 10 years into cloud computing and AI.
Risk-averse Japan lost its place as a global tech leader during the past few decades, but the AI boom, still in its infancy, is an entirely different beast. This time around, its cautious and collective approach to the technology means Tokyo is uniquely positioned to come out ahead when it comes to getting AI right. The rest of the world might soon find itself playing catch-up.
Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Liu Shu-pin (劉書彬) asked Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) a question on Tuesday last week about President William Lai’s (賴清德) decision in March to officially define the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as governed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as a foreign hostile force. Liu objected to Lai’s decision on two grounds. First, procedurally, suggesting that Lai did not have the right to unilaterally make that decision, and that Cho should have consulted with the Executive Yuan before he endorsed it. Second, Liu objected over national security concerns, saying that the CCP and Chinese President Xi
RSS