AI Training For Japanese By Microsoft
AI Training For Japanese By Microsoft: Microsoft on Tuesday announced a $2.9 billion investment over the next two years in Japan to bolster the country y’s push into artificial intelligence and strengthen its cyber defences in the face of threats from China and Russia.
Microsoft To Invest $2.9 Bn In Japan AI Push
The announcement coincides with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Washing- ton, underscoring Tokyo’s commitment to becoming a major Al power.
Japan is also expanding its semi- conductor industry with the help of big foreign investment. Taiwan ese chip behemoth TSMC opened a new $8.6-billion chip factory in southern Japan in February, and is planning a second facility.
Microsoft has become a major player in the advancement of Al through its partnership with Chat GPT-maker OpenAl propelling it past Apple as the world’s biggest company by market capitalisation.
“This is Microsoft’s single largest investment in its 46-year history in Japan,” said Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft, who met Kishida on Tuesday.
“These investments are essen- tial ingredients for Japan to build a robust Al economy.”
The investment includes provid- ing “more advanced computing resources”, according to Smith, including powerful graphics pro- cessing units crucial for running Al applications.
Microsoft also pledged to invest in training three million Japanese workers in Al skills over the next three years, and announced the opening of its first Microsoft Re search Asia lab in Tokyo that will work on Al and robotics. The US company also unveiled plans to collaborate with Japan’s government to strengthen the country’s cybersecurity following an in- crease in hacking and breaches. “The threat landscape for cyber security has become more challenging, Smith told the Nikkei news outlet
“We’re seeing that from China and from Russia in particular, but we’re also seeing growing ransom ware activity around the world.” Google in March also launched a new cybersecurity hub in Japan, aimed at helping to upgrade de fences in the Asia-Pacific.
Kishida will meet President Joe Biden on Wednesday with defence ties high on the agenda, but also cooperation in technology from space to semiconductors.
Motivated by geopolitical concerns surrounding Taiwan, Tokyo is seeking to bring back the 1980s glory days when Japanese firms such as Toshiba and NEC dominated the microchip market.
As well as the TSMC plants, ja pan is ploughing around 56 billion into its next-generation semiconductor venture called Rapidus, involving a host of Japanese firms including Sony and Toyota. Rapidus is collaborating with US giant IBM with the aim of mass- producing two-nanometre logic chips in Japan from 2027.
On Tuesday, alongside Micro- soft’s investment, two new Al research partnerships were announced between four US and Japanese universities.
The research programmes, funded by tech firms including Nvidia, Amazon, Arm and Soft- Bank Group as well as Microsoft, “can help set the standard in this fast-evolving field”, US Ambassador Rahm Emanuel said.
Rene Haas, CEO of British chip designer Arm, also hailed the “historic new university partnerships. “The unprecedented progress we’ve seen in Al will transform virtually every industry and improve countless lives,” he said.
