Why didn’t Japan invent generative AI?

Today's "AI arms race" is a sequel. The first played out between the US and Japan. And it isn't over yet.

The sudden appearance of China’s DeepSeek R1, a cheap, capable, open source large language model, sent the world into an absolute tizzy last week. Observers declared it the “Sputnik moment” in an ongoing AI arms race. Many questions remain about the actual costs involved in building DeepSeek R1, the datasets used for training, and the implications of us…