The United States and Japan announced a political agreement on April 10 that includes a partnership with Microsoft that focuses in part on AI.
Under the deal, Microsoft will invest $2.9 billion in Japan over the next two years to support artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and data centers.
The investment will also help train 3 million people through digital skills programs, establish a Microsoft Research Institute in Japan, and build a collaborative cybersecurity effort between the U.S. and Japanese governments.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to invest another $15 billion in Japan by 2027 to support cloud infrastructure for AI and other digital services.
Each country also explained resource trading. NVIDIA will provide GPUs to Japanese companies such as Sakura Internet and Softbank, while Google and Microsoft will provide computing resources to Japanese companies developing AI-based models.
Research partnership
The United States and Japan separately announced a $110 million academic research collaboration.
This joint initiative will help advance AI research and development and build on previous quantum computing partnerships and research.
Several universities are participating, including the University of Washington, University of Tsukuba, Carnegie Mellon University, and Keio University. NVIDIA, Arm, Amazon, Microsoft, and a group of Japanese companies are funding the partnership.
Other research collaborations include NVIDIA and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the U.S. Department of Energy and Japan’s Ministry of Science (MEXT), and Argonne National Laboratory and Japan’s RIKEN.
AI safety initiatives
The agreement also discusses AI risks and harm reduction. The United States and Japan intend to provide transparency to their citizens by labeling official government content and identifying content created or modified by artificial intelligence.
The two countries also plan to support AI safety research institutes and cooperate on safety standards. The agreement describes a “crosswalk” between Japan’s AI Guidelines for Business and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, which will help both countries develop compatible policy frameworks around AI. It turns out.
The US recently announced that it had signed a similar agreement on AI safety with the UK on April 2nd.
