Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks during the company’s annual general meeting in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, June 20, 2024. Son outlined his ambition to help creating an AI thousands of times smarter than humans, making its most grandiose claims since the Japanese conglomerate began taking steps to shore up its finances after a series of bad startup bets at the time.
Kosuke Okahara | Bloomberg | beautiful images
Artificial intelligence 10,000 times smarter than humans will appear in the next 10 years, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said Friday, in a rare public appearance in which he questioned his own purpose in life.
Son laid out his vision of a world with artificial super intelligence, or ASI, as he named it.
The CEO first talked about another term – artificial general intelligence or AGI – refers to AI that is more intelligent than humans. Son said the technology could be 1 to 10 times smarter than humans and would appear within the next three to five years, sooner than he expected.
But if AGI is not much smarter than humans, “then we don’t need to change the way we live, we don’t need to change the structure of human lifestyle,” Son said, according to a direct translation of his comments on Japanese magazine, delivered during SoftBank’s annual general meeting of shareholders.
“But when it comes to ASI, it’s a completely different story. [With] ASI, you will see great improvement.”
Son discussed how the future will see many different ASI models interacting with each other, much like neurons in the human brain. According to Son, this will lead to AI that is 10,000 times smarter than any human genius.
SoftBank shares closed down more than 3% in Japan after the meeting.
Son is the founder of SoftBank who rose to fame after his early and profitable investment in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. He positioned SoftBank as a technology visionary with the launch of the Vision Fund in 2017, a large investment fund focused on backing technology companies. While some bets have been successful, there have also been many high-profile failures, such as office-sharing company WeWork.
After posting, record it Financial loss at Vision Fund in 2022Son said SoftBank will switch to “defensive” mode and be more cautious with its investments. In 2023, Vision Fund reported a new record lossSon immediately after said that SoftBank will now move into an “offensive” mode as he is excited about investment opportunities in AI.
Son has gradually disappeared from public view since then.
He returned to the spotlight on Friday to give a speech filled with existential questions.
“Two years ago, I was old, my remaining life was limited and I hadn’t done anything yet, I cried a lot,” Son said, saying he felt he had not achieved anything significant so far.
He added that he has now found SoftBank’s mission, which is “the evolution of humanity.” He also said he had found his own purpose in life.
“For what purpose was SoftBank founded? For what purpose was Masa Son born? It may sound strange but I think I was born to realize ASI. I am extremely serious about that,” Son said.
