“AI for Social Good” and the First AI Arms Race

Lessons from Japan’s Fifth Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) Project

抄録

AI is currently dominated by two superpowers, the USA and China. Both are engaged in an “arms race” that promises to shape the global balance of power. But this is not the first AI arms race between the USA and a rising Asian economic power. Japan’s 1981 announcement of the Fifth Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) project—a bold plan to revolutionize computing hardware and software—sparked a global AI arms race that ran for over a decade. This paper draws on prior historical research analyzing Japan’s FGCS project to ask: What can be learned from this historical episode? After briefly recapitulating the FGCS and global responses to it, the paper expounds a handful of policy lessons relevant to navigating the current AI arms race.