Japan Announces Participation in U.S. AI Innovation Initiative to Compete with China for "Technological Hegemony"

According to a June 1 report by Japanese media outlet Yomiuri Shimbun: The Japanese government has announced its decision to join a U.S. national project leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate scientific and technological innovation, becoming the project’s first international partner.

Over the next five years, the U.S. and Japanese governments will jointly invest $1 billion (approximately 160 billion JPY) in joint development of AI and other advanced technologies. Japan and the United States aim to collaborate strategically to gain an edge in the competition for technological supremacy against China.

Senior officials from Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, as well as the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, are scheduled to visit the United States in early June to jointly announce the initiative with U.S. Department of Energy officials overseeing the project. Japan’s involvement is part of the “Mission Genesis” national initiative led by President Trump. The U.S. government has emphasized the significance of such R&D projects, placing them on par with the Manhattan Project’s atomic bomb development and NASA’s Apollo program that achieved humanity’s first moon landing.

The goal is to dramatically shorten the time required for experiments and computations by connecting AI with scientific data and supercomputers stored at U.S. national laboratories, thereby generating a large number of groundbreaking achievements.

The project covers 26 fields, including semiconductor development and critical mineral exploration. Major U.S. IT companies such as OpenAI and Google are participating.

Japan will contribute $500 million toward collaboration in areas such as quantum technology, nuclear fusion, and biotechnology. Participation will allow Japan to leverage America’s abundant data and computing resources.

Currently, the United States is strengthening its influence as a center for technological innovation to counter China’s rapid rise in cutting-edge fields, including artificial intelligence.

Original article: toutiao.com/article/1866747196469257/

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