Infrastructure and Governance for the AI Era: SoftBank Corp. Holds its First ESG Briefing

On February 26, 2024, SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434) held its first Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) briefing for investors. At the event in Tokyo, three SoftBank executives-Junichi Miyakawa (President & CEO), Masato Ikeda, (Vice President, CSR Division Head, ESG Planning & Management Senior Director) and Yasuyuki Genda (Vice President, HR Division Head, General Affairs Division Head and Well-being Promotion Office Head)-gave an in-depth overview of SoftBank's sustainability initiatives.

Preparing for the era of coexistence with AI

At the outset CEO Junichi Miyakawa explained SoftBank's perspective on ESG management, first citing the company's corporate philosophy, "Information Revolution - Happiness for everyone," which seeks to harness the Information Revolution to contribute to the wellbeing of people and society, and its vision to become the corporate group needed most by people around the world. Guided by this philosophy and vision, Miyakawa noted that SoftBank aims to strike a balance between realizing a sustainable society and enhancing corporate value. To this end, he emphasized SoftBank's Long-term Vision announced in May 2023 whereby SoftBank will aim to build next-generation social infrastructure essential for the development of a digital society.

This Long-term Vision anticipates a society that coexists with AI, and Miyakawa expressed his view that people's lives will change in unprecedented ways due to AI's rapid evolution. The generation and processing of vast amounts of data will become critical in this future era, and the power needed to run AI will also greatly increase, he noted. Accordingly, it will be crucial to build infrastructure that can balance the increase in demand for AI-driven data processing while taking steps to mitigate global warming.

Miyakawa said that a society that coexists with AI also brings potential risks, including deep fakes (where AI is used to generate fake images and videos), self-driving car accidents and personal information leaks. He introduced some recent initiatives, such as jointly studying AI ethics with the University of Tokyo through the Institute for AI and Beyond and creating in-house AI ethics policies, regulations, guidelines, and educational materials. Miyakawa also said that in April 2024 SoftBank plans to establish an AI Governance Committee that taps into the knowledge and insights of external experts.

Measures to mitigate climate change

Masato Ikeda, CSR Division Head and ESG Planning & Management Senior Director, next spoke in detail about SoftBank's environmental measures.

Ikeda emphasized that SoftBank is focusing on mitigating climate change and promoting the use of natural capital and resource circulation. As SoftBank's business relies on energy, it has a strong responsibility to decisively take on these issues, he said. In this context, Ikeda outlined SoftBank's roadmap and progress towards becoming carbon neutral by 2030, and achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Ikeda also noted that SoftBank's ESG initiatives have been highly evaluated by third parties. "We received high praise from various international and Japan-based organizations and ratings agencies. We'll continue to focus on promoting ESG through our business and strive to achieve a high degree of transparency through our disclosures," he said.

Employee growth means company growth

The third and final speaker was Yasuyuki Genda, who heads SoftBank's HR Division, General Affairs Division and Well-being Promotion Office.

"As our CEO explained, the coming era where AI coexists with society and the building of next-generation social infrastructure is critical to SoftBank's future," Genda said. He explained that AI engineers and experts in the digital transformation (DX) field are becoming increasingly important to SoftBank's future business strategies.

Genda also noted that SoftBank is harnessing generative AI tools to improve productivity and promoting re-skilling programs for employees. In this context he outlined SoftBank's human resources strategy based on its human capital portfolio.

"Employee growth leads to company growth, which in turn creates new opportunities for employees to excel and level up," Genda said. He explained that SoftBank has different ways of fostering employees' self-directed growth, including "SoftBank University," where over 100 employees serve as instructors for training, "SoftBank Academia," which attracts a diverse range of talent inside and outside the SoftBank Group and "SoftBank InnoVenture," a program where approximately 6,000 group company employees register to learn about starting new businesses. A job posting and free agent system that enables employees to take on new career challenges in different divisions, as well as internal and external side job systems are all aimed at fostering talent and enabling employees to design their own careers, Genda added.

Genda also highlighted SoftBank's measure to promote the participation of women as one of SoftBank's diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. He reported that SoftBank is making good progress toward achieving its goal of a 20% female manager ratio by fiscal 2035.

Genda also highlighted a company-wide initiative involving generative AI that aims to create an environment where all employees can utilize AI to the fullest. He said SoftBank introduced infrastructure that enables the use of generative AI, AI learning courses, and an AI contest that offers a top prize of 10 million yen. A total of 150,000 employee ideas were generated as a result of the contest and a new organization that reports directly to the CEO was established in February 2024 to support the commercialization of projects based on this repository of ideas.

(Posted on March 4, 2024)
by SoftBank News Editors