SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son Shifts to ‘Offense’ in A.I. Race

For months, Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s voluble founder and chief government, stored quiet as his tech conglomerate struggled with big funding losses.

But because the world races to embrace synthetic intelligence — one thing that has lengthy fascinated him — Mr. Son used his firm’s annual shareholder assembly on Wednesday to publicly, and memorably, restate his dedication to changing into a frontrunner within the cutting-edge expertise.

“We are ready to shift to offense mode,” Mr. Son instructed traders and analysts, including: “I want SoftBank to lead the A.I. revolution.” Reviving the sort of grand displays that he lengthy favored — who can neglect the “valley of coronavirus” slide in 2020, that includes flying unicorns? — the SoftBank chief started by asking, “What is mankind?”

The reply, apparently, is one thing that may profit from the expertise behind chatbots, which has already spurred an funding growth. (To be truthful, the potential of A.I. was one in every of a number of central theses behind SoftBank’s $100 billion first Vision Fund.)

“When your grandkids are our age, I believe they will be living in a reality where the computer is 10,000 times smarter than the sum of all human wisdom,” he mentioned on Wednesday. SoftBank will slot in, he added, as “an architect to build the future of humankind.”

Tech trade leaders have warned that A.I. techniques may someday pose an existential menace to humanity and have referred to as for a global watchdog to manage A.I. expertise.

Mr. Son argues that SoftBank has higher days forward. Although the corporate’s Vision Funds have suffered massive paper losses amid the decimation of start-up valuations, he mentioned SoftBank had since amassed greater than $35 billion in money in “defense mode,” and was prepared to speculate it. (The firm additionally stands to profit from the forthcoming preliminary public providing of Arm, the chip designer it owns.)

And Mr. Son mentioned he was excited once more, after mendacity low final yr. “There were times when I felt so empty,” he instructed traders. “‘Is this enough? Is this it?’ I cried and cried and couldn’t stop crying for days.” Now, he added, “I’m having too much fun.”