Microsoft is reportedly considering providing the Japanese government access to ChatGPT after enhancing the processing power of its data centers located within the country.
Japan’s Digital Agency is expected to spend over US$ 2 million to make the artificial intelligence technology available for government ministries on a trial basis for one year. The technology is to help streamline tasks such as preparing minutes and analyzing government statistics.
Microsoft, a partner company of OpenAI that developed ChatGPT, is projected to supply the Japanese government with the latest text-generating large language model, the GPT-4, and an AI technology developed by Meta.
With this, Japan is slated to become the first country in Asia and the third globally that Microsoft has provided this service, following the U.S. and European Union. For Microsoft, the roll-out is expected to alleviate concerns regarding state confidentiality in regard to managing information when the service is deployed overseas.
Pundits see this as an opportunity for industries that need to utilize data in a closed environment, such as the banking sector, to readily use AI technology when providing services. The roll-out is also expected to contribute to Japan’s efforts to tackle its lack of domestic computing ability necessary for the development of domestic generative AI models.
Meanwhile, Microsoft in its annual report released last Thursday, cited the shortage of AI semiconductors or graphics processing units(GPU) for the first time ever as a risk factor that could lead to disruptions to its data center and cloud services.
GPU plays the role of the brain in generative AI. Currently, Nvidia and its high-performance AI hardware, including the H100 and A100, dominate the global GPU market with a staggering 90% or more market share.
Last week, Microsoft laid out an aggressive quarterly capital spending as it built new data centers to support AI and said capital expenditures will continue to climb as it buys AI chips from Nvidia to power those data centers.