SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son believes that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will arrive much sooner than two years and will be deployed first in large corporations in Japan. According to Son, AGI will be able to understand human emotions.
To accelerate its rollout, SoftBank Group companies will have exclusive access to OpenAI’s most advanced AI models in Japan through their joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan. This partnership is expected to bring transformative AI to some of the world’s most influential companies, starting with Japan.
Other experts also predict rapid progress in AI development. SAP CEO Christian Klein stated that agentic AI is close to being deployed at scale, and his company plans to launch two AI agents this year – a sales AI agent and a supply chain AI agent.
Klein emphasized the importance of contextualizing data for agentic AI success. He also noted that about 80% of SAP’s customers lack the infrastructure, team, or investment needed to implement AI agents. However, SAP plans to fill this gap with its software.
The experts agree that partnership will be crucial for AI’s complex development. Marc Antaki, deputy chief strategy and risk officer at Mubadala Investment Company, said that partnership is essential for overcoming the challenges of AI.
Architects of top generative AI models predict a breakthrough in coming weeks that could unleash Ph.D.-level super-agents capable of completing complex human tasks. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has scheduled a closed-door briefing for U.S. government officials to discuss this advancement.
The expected advancements explain why Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and others have talked publicly about AI replacing mid-level software engineers and other human jobs this year. OpenAI product chief Kevin Weil stated that humanity is “on the verge” of having AI agents capable of completing tasks in the real world.
Source: https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/altman-ai-agents-openai-agi-japan