OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joins Mikitani on stage virtually for Rakuten Optimism 2023
This week, Rakuten Group kicked off Rakuten Optimism 2023, the group’s largest annual interactive event, held at Pacifico Yokohama for five days from August 2 to August 6.
Rakuten Optimism is an event series designed to inspire visions of a shared brighter future, provide opportunities to discover joy, and deepen understanding of Rakuten’s unique ecosystem of services. This year’s edition returns as an in-person event for the first time in four years, bringing together top luminaries and showcasing cutting-edge technologies.
The first day of the business conference featured a keynote speech by Mickey Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten Group, that concluded with a surprise virtual appearance by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, an AI research and deployment company whose mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Rakuten is already deploying OpenAI technology and the two companies are actively exploring use cases together.
The following are some of the key highlights from their conversation.
When asked about the opportunity to collaborate across OpenAI and Rakuten Group, Altman responded, “Looking forward, we see incredible opportunities in healthcare, education, all these areas which can happen when we have truly intelligent models.” Altman added that AI will do more to create dynamism in the world, new opportunities and massive growth.
My goal is not only for Rakuten to enjoy the power of OpenAI or generative AI but we would also like to empower our many clients and enterprises, big or small, and build a new world together.
Mickey Mikitani, Chairman & CEO, Rakuten Group
Speaking about the future of AI and its challenges, Altman commented “The two key factors are artificial intelligence and cost of energy. If we can drive costs down lower and lower, the impact that it will have on what we can do and what we can have will be incredible.”
To date, Rakuten has already launched a number of services powered by OpenAI’s technology. The messaging app Rakuten Viber provides users with an official chatbot powered by the interactive AI ChatGPT and image generation AI DALL·E 2 provided by OpenAI, while Rakuten Securities has launched an Investment AI Assistant (beta version) which uses ChatGPT to help customers learn about the basics of investment and investment methods suited to their experience level*2. In July this year, Rakuten Life Insurance also introduced ChatGPT to its dedicated terminals to assist insurance agents in their daily work*3.
Going forward, Rakuten is committed to enhancing its services for customers and business partners even further by continuing to leverage its high-quality data and extensive domain knowledge with OpenAI’s state-of-the-art technologies such as ChatGPT and exploring use cases together.
To view the full session, click here.
*1 https://corp.rakuten.co.jp/news/update/2023/0519_01.html (Japanese only)
*2 https://www.rakuten-life.co.jp/about/news/230703.html (Japanese only)
*3 https://www.rakuten-sec.co.jp/web/company/newsrelease/pdf/press20230719.pdf (Japanese only)
