Bio: Dr. Satoshi Sekiguchi received a BSc. from the University of Tokyo, a M.Eng. from University of Tsukuba, and a Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo, respectively. He joined Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL), Japan in 1984 to engage research in high-performance computing widely from its system architecture to applications. His expertise also includes applying IT-based solutions to many of society’s problems related to global climate change, environmental management and resource efficiency.

He served as the founding director of Grid Technology Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in 2002-2008, the Director of Information Technology Research Institute, AIST in 2008-2012, currently the Deputy Director-General of the Directorate for Information Technology and Electronics. He is a member of Science Council Japan, IEEE CS and ACM, and IPSJ fellow.

Keynote Title: Constructing the world’s first open public infrastructure for advancing
AI research and deployment

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is leading the world’s industrial revolution in relation to IoT, Big Data, Robot, advanced biotechnology, new manufacturing industry and so on. Although there is an ongoing discussion of the AI singularity, there is a more immediate need to focus on practical applications of AI. In these applications, AI can be defined as sensors coupled with deep learning, which can substitute for some human sensor functions.

Thus, AI will relieve workers from the burden of some mentally intensive tasks. For this reason, algorithmic techniques such as machine learning, deep learning and so forth have developed dramatically, which depend on big data sources as training data. What is more important is on a practical level, where I will highlight that contributions from HPC technology is indispensable for learning. Up to now, we have supported AI as a system, but cooperation between HPC application and machine learning will intensify and become very important in
the new AI era.

AIST is constructing one of the world’s largest AI focused, open and public computing infrastructure called ABCI (AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure). It will support not only academic research but also industrial applications to be deployed for use in society.

ABCI will be operational shortly in 2018 and will serve as a reference architecture for data centers combining HPC and AI to discover new innovations in the future.