SoftBank Corp.

SoftBank Corp. and its group companies operate a wide range of businesses, including telecommunication services (40 million users), online media (85 million users), communication app services (97 million users), and smartphone payment services (66 million users), in Japan and globally.

To enable a society that coexists with AI, which will see massive growth in data volumes, SoftBank is building distributed AI data centers, AI computing platforms and other types of next-generation social infrastructure.

Junichi Miyakawa, CEO of SoftBank Corp., spoke to us about the company’s plans for the future and how AI will shape the way that we communicate in the future.

What initiatives are you undertaking, and what is SoftBank Corp. looking to achieve in future?

Since I became CEO of SoftBank Corp. in April 2021, I’ve been saying both internally and externally that we must become a company that’s indispensable to society. By this I mean that SoftBank must become a leading provider of infrastructure and platforms to support the digital and AI services that will underpin society.

Going forward, IoT and other devices will become even more connected in our everyday lives and across all industries. Related services and solutions will be operated on platforms embedded with AI. SoftBank is building and operating this infrastructure. Some of the main initiatives we’re pursuing include developing large language models (LLMs) specialized for the Japanese language, developing generative AI in-house, establishing a large-scale AI data center in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture, to meet the growing demand for AI utilization, and implementing AI-RAN, which integrates AI into telecom radio access networks (RAN), layered on top of our AI data center infrastructure. In this way, SoftBank is aiming to deploy businesses that leverage the strengths of its vertically integrated AI management assets, including network infrastructure, data centers and generative AI.

Around the world, we’re seeing the construction of computational infrastructure for AI and the development of generative AI, among other types of AI, taking place at a tremendous pace. The development and buildout in the United States and China is particularly remarkable. The reason for this rapid development is readily apparent—AI resources will become a source of wealth for the companies and countries that possess them. So I’m strongly concerned about whether Japan can proceed as it has until now. With the emergence of services based on generative AI, Japan’s international trade deficit for digital-related services now amounts to approximately 6 trillion yen (approximately USD 39 billion). As people here in Japan increasingly utilize AI services from countries abroad, however, this trade gap is expected to widen even more rapidly. As the CEO of a company that does most of its business in Japan, I believe that if AI becomes a crucial part of social infrastructure, we need to develop homegrown AI that’s suited for Japanese culture and language. If there’s an easy-to-use AI that understands the unique customs of people in Japan, it’ll be able to attract more users, provide greater value to various life situations and business occasions, and become a catalyst to root AI into Japanese society. I also believe that this will, in turn, help balance the digital trade deficit.

As AI permeates society, what kind of impact do you think it will have? How will it change how people communicate and their social interactions? And how is SoftBank preparing for these changes?

Given that the rapid and advanced development of AI is now underway, it’s extremely difficult to say how AI will permeate society, what kind of applications will emerge on AI platforms, and what impact it will have on people. With AI continually learning and evolving on a daily basis, many are keen to know what kinds of platform services or applications will be developed or widely used in the future. This question is of utmost concern to tech and AI companies worldwide, as it directly impacts their business strategies, so they may not readily disclose their plans. That said, the path for SoftBank and our group companies is clear: with Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)—which is expected to surpass human intelligence by a significant margin— on the horizon, we’re aiming to build an ecosystem that leverages ASI to benefit society and achieve growth for the entire group.

Since the introduction of GPT-3.5, rapidly evolving AI undoubtedly holds the potential to significantly disrupt the current foundations of industry. It’s very likely it could bring about a change in the underlying foundation (or the operating system) of social infrastructure. Looking back, as a smartphone user, you may have already seen how companies that once dominated operating systems at a global level have fared. You may have witnessed how business ecosystems and models evolved, and how various services stemming from them increasingly became integrated into people's lives, consequently changing the way we work and communicate. Before the emergence of GPT-3.5, we envisioned that the coming of a society that coexists with AI was inevitable. So we promoted our next-generation social infrastructure concept, and have been actively working on building the foundations necessary to facilitate this paradigm shift.

There are concerns that the evolution of AI, which has a significant impact on society, may create distances between individuals. How do you think a society coexisting with AI will actually evolve?

With the widespread adoption of smartphones and advances in communication infrastructure, we’ve seen an abundance of services that have enriched our lives and made them more convenient. Similarly, as AI advances and takes root in society, I believe that a variety of services based on AI will emerge, further enhancing convenience in our lives, making industries more efficient, and optimizing society overall. Just as smartphones have provided various forms of communication services, connecting people to each other, I believe that even in a society coexisting with AI, human connections will become even more valuable. This is because the desire for person-to-person communication is a universal and inherent human need.

I understand that opinions differ on the impact AI may have on humanity and society overall. Many are worried about the potential risks. However, I’m generally optimistic, and I believe that AI’s potential is overall positive. One reason I believe this is because SoftBank has been collaborating and sharing knowledge with numerous business partners and government agencies over the years, providing advanced technology solutions to address societal challenges and resolve them. In the future, countries around the world will likely develop their own AIs at varied levels for their own purposes and uses. Among them, we may also see patterns where AIs engage in conversations and learn from each other. In a society that coexists with AI, it’s possible that AI could generate a wealth of knowledge and wisdom, offering solutions to social issues that were previously unsolvable by humans. I believe that by harnessing and utilizing the benefits of AI, we can create a more convenient and prosperous society in the future.