SoftBank’s Son Sees AI Running Households In A Few Years

SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son sketched out one of the most aggressive timelines for the adoption of artificial intelligence yet, envisioning a near future where the technology would run entire households..

AI will soon be able to monitor the health of family members, call the doctor when needed, do grocery shopping, make reservations, judge optimal investments and tutor young children, Son said in a speech at an annual forum for enterprise clients on Thursday. He moved up his expectation for when artificial general intelligence — the long-term goal for developers from OpenAI to Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google — would arrive to within the next two to three years.

Son, whose penchant for bold predictions has led to outsized wins and losses over the years, heads up Japan’s biggest tech investor and has made hundreds of bets on services powered by AI. His rosy view of the technology’s potential has in past years come with a warning to skeptics that they may be left behind if they do not embrace the coming revolution in how humanity lives and works.

“We can design AI personal agents who understand your emotions and whose greatest reward is your happiness,” Son said. “This technology will evolve to a point where your happiness will be its greatest reward.”

The 67-year-old’s comments underline his willingness to keep investing billions of dollars in the field. SoftBank, which is sitting on a formidable cash pile, is contributing $500 million to OpenAI’s $6.6 billion fundraising round that values the startup at $157 billion. Son did not mention the investment during his speech, but he praised OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT model, called 01, and its ability to process information to mimic human reasoning.

The SoftBank chief said he asked the model difficult questions, hoping to stump the AI, but got good responses within 45 seconds. His queries included how he can increase his savings account to ¥100 million ($680,000) and how to extend the range of electric car batteries.

“The human brain consists of some 100 trillion synaptic connections,” Son said. That number hasn’t and won’t change, even in 1,000 years. “Generative AI’s parameters — which are the equivalent to these synapses — are growing at a furious pace,” he said.

A reasoning AI will need to be able to talk and negotiate with others when conducting complex tasks like settling on a price for a service or making sure the bath is full and at the user’s desired temperature at the right time, Son said. All that will drive the need for more connectivity and require more chips using technology from SoftBank’s Arm Holdings Plc, he added.

Shares of SoftBank were up around 2.7% in Tokyo. Its stock price, which has tumbled from a record high in July, is still up almost 40% this year.

SoftBank plans to invest further in AI semiconductors, data centers and robots, while also helping to build out Japan’s AI ecosystem. The company’s telecom unit has announced plans to build data centers in both northern and central Japan, and was early to secure a stockpile of Nvidia Corp. graphic processing units shortly after the chip company launched its Grace and Hopper architectures in 2022.

One of Son’s plans is to deploy $100 billion into AI-related chips, Bloomberg reported in February. The billionaire warned shareholders in June that his next big endeavor could be a massive hit or a terrible flop, but that SoftBank had no choice but to try. 

Following a string of losses on startup bets, a humbled Son has largely shied away from the spotlight to focus on chip unit Arm. The Tokyo-based tech investment firm remains saddled with hundreds of loss-making startups on its books. The majority of that portfolio is made up of non-listed young companies, looking to Son for guidance to navigate a fast-changing tech landscape.