IBM Japan held Think Japan 2026 in Tokyo. Gokami Makoto (五神 真), president of RIKEN, discussed Japan's strengths in the AI for Science era, while IBM Japan President Murata Masaki (村田 将輝) explained the company's management policy in the age of AI.
IBM Japan held its annual Think Japan 2026 event in Tokyo, where Gokami Makoto (五神 真), president of RIKEN, discussed the progress of AI for Science and Japan's strengths. Murata Masaki (村田 将輝), who had assumed the position of president, also took the stage and discussed the direction of corporate management in the age of AI and quantum computing.
Gokami said the creation of human knowledge is at a turning point and that science and computing are fundamentally interconnected, emphasizing the concept of open science. He expressed the view that advances in AI will bring the relationship between science and computing into a new phase.
He also highlighted the progress of agentic AI, expressing the view that AI will evolve beyond a tool for researchers into an entity that supports discovery. He pointed out that, in addition to language data, non-linguistic data will become central to AI training in the future.
Data from facilities operated by RIKEN, including the large-scale synchrotron radiation facility SPring-8, reaches petabyte-scale volumes daily. Combining such massive volumes of non-linguistic data with AI will accelerate the evolution of AI, he said. AI for Science is being positioned as a foundation for research, with the aim of promoting the creation and sharing of knowledge throughout society.