SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, after selling Nvidia stake for OpenAI, now has a ‘request’

SoftBank Group's CEO Masayoshi Son, a strong advocate of artificial intelligence (AI), expressed rare caution regarding the technology's safety risks as AI systems rapidly evolve. During a recent event in Kyoto, Son, alongside White House science and technology policy advisor Michael Kratsios, warned that the increasing capabilities of AI make it crucial for nations to foster trust and collaborate on harnessing the technology together.

Son emphasized that relying on human-to-human conflict is no longer an option, as the far greater threat now emanates from powerful AI models that could become "super dangerous" if in the wrong hands.

The 69-year-old Japanese billionaire has invested nearly $65 billion of SoftBank funds into ChatGPT's creator, OpenAI, and has previously championed AI's potential to generate investment returns and benefit humanity. Kratsios, speaking at the same event, announced a U.S.-led initiative uniting 17 countries to leverage AI for advancing scientific research. Notably, China was notably absent from the list of endorsing nations.

Son cited the exponential growth of AI, predicting that robotic systems in automated cloud laboratories would conduct hundreds of parallel experiments, generating data that would be analyzed in real-time. Moreover, AI services will soon be able to synthesize thousands of research papers and compress years of work into tens of hours of analysis, enabling AI agents to assist human researchers.

By 2040, at least 20% of global gross domestic product will be attributed to AI and learning-capable machines, amounting to $46 trillion, according to Son's projection.