Sakana AI: Japan has the capacity to stimulate its own economy and develop its own AI infrastructure
So in Japan we believe there’s a you know great opportunities also in the public sector. Uh you know Japan is one of the leading democracies in Asia. Uh you know there’s also many potential geopolitical tensions in the region and we believe that the Japanese government is working towards upgrading it in infrastructure including the defense sector. Our company is working closely with the defense base in Japan. We have discussions with the ministry of defense and other uh key partners. Our company in fact also participated in a high-profile competition that’s organized co-organized by the US Department of Defense and the Ministry of Defense called the US Japan Innovation Challenge. And out of 60 global participants, Sakana AI was one of the three winners of the innovation award. We’ve been developing uh technology to combat uh some of the proposals including uh bio security you know like a modeling what happens if there’s another pandemic in Japan and also another key area that the government cares about is disinformation uh how to recognize uh fake news or fake images that were generated using AI on on social media and how to uh you know develop a system to contextualize uh this uh disinformation campaigns. So these are two examples that uh we have worked on uh in recent RFP competitions and have won and we’re actually quite excited to continue working with the government’s uh sector in not just the defense area but overall you know public sector institutions again on making these institutions run more efficiently using AI technology. How would you assess Japan’s position in this AI technology AI race? uh you know we often talk about the AI race between the US and China. Um do you think Japan is getting there in terms of you know figuring out the need to cultivate its own AI system? Is that why you wanted to make this AI company in Japan for Japan? Yes, exactly. Uh this is a core mission of this company. you know when I started this company with my co-founders 18 months to two years ago uh the the realization is like you know most uh most of us in a company started off as researchers at US-based companies like Google and DeepMind uh but you know being in Japan we recognize that this country needs to upgrade it infrastructure most of the AI and technology is developed either in the US or China and we really wanted to build a company in Japan for Japan Japan is a leading industry you know it’s currently the fourth largest economy in the world. We believe it has the capacity to stimulate its own economy to develop its own AI infrastructure and this company is really you know uh the goal is to spark a catalyst. It cannot just be us. We need to work with Japan to develop the ecosystem uh to bring in the also the talents as well to come to Japan to develop the AI technology here. Uh I think one of the benefits for Japan is actually you know we can attract many you know talented people from all over the world. You know as you know Japan is a top tourist destination. Uh many foreigners or even you know from all over the world like to travel to Japan and we’re actually taking advantage of that and our company uh half of our staff is Japanese but half of our staff is also foreign research talents who have chose to came to Japan to work for us in Japan. So I think you know uh it’s it’s a challenging to always of course to start a startup in Japan but there are many benefits uh as well which our company is trying to take advantage of.
David Ha of Sakana AI discusses the Japanese government’s efforts to improve their tech infrastructure, especially within the defense sector. He also discusses the talent arbitrage that Japan can take advantage of being a ‘top tourist destination’.
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