Op-Ed
[Op-Ed] Why Japan Digs into Basic Research at Its National AI Institute
September 18, 2026
Masashi Sugiyama, Director of RIKEN AIP and Professor at the University of Tokyo, asks why Japan built its national AI institute around basic research, and what a decade of that choice has produced.
He also looks at the year since RIKEN AIP and NAIRL signed their research MOU: a visit to Tokyo, a joint workshop in Seoul, and a partnership that has moved from paper to people.
Collaboration, he writes, is infrastructure rather than an event. The rest of his argument, and why he believes Seoul and Tokyo can build another axis of global AI research, is in the column.
This column is part of NAIRL’s biweekly series “AI Talent Powerhouse,” published in ZDNet Korea.