��Congratulations to all of you who have received your master��s or doctoral degrees today. On behalf of the Kyoto Institute of Technology, I would like to extend to you my heartfelt congratulations. I would also like to congratulate and express our gratitude for your families and all those who have supported you thus far, as well as the faculty members who have guided you in your research.

��There were 40 master��s degree recipients and 24 doctoral degree recipients. Since the establishment of the Graduate School of Science and Technology in 1988, there have been a total of 13,071 master��s degrees and 1,364 doctoral degrees conferred, including those conferred today. You all have become Masters of Engineering, Doctors of Philosophy, or Doctors of Engineering.

��Our master��s degree recipients have worked to deepen their expertise, and engaged in research for their master��s thesis in order to solve specific issues. By working through the entire process, from planning and design to evaluation, I am certain you all have developed the ability to advance research and development. Our doctoral degree recipients, on the other hand, have worked to discover issues on their own and solve these issues to create new value, over the course of writing their doctoral dissertations.

Moving forward, you will finally find yourselves in a position to create new value in the real world. I am sure those of you in the doctoral course for working adults will be creating value in a different way than you did in the past. And those of you who are advancing to the doctoral course will be practice value creation over the course of their programs.

��Japan is currently struggling with a super-aging society and a declining population�Cproblems that only seem to be getting worse. Out in the larger world, the advancement of globalization has brought to light problems related to food supply, resource depletion, and the environment, on a global scale. There are also unceasing conflicts. The emergence of generative AI like ChatGPT has brought us to a turning point when it comes to the ��cyber world,�� made up not just of the Internet but of AI and big data, and it seems that our lives are on the brink of undergoing a massive change. In this context, it has become increasingly important to think carefully about how the world will change a decade or two into the future, and use this to inform the kind of research and development you will engage in.

��With so many issues before us, it can feel difficult to look to the future. It is a difficult thing to envision the society of the future. At times like this, I think of Moore��s Law as something that can give us forward-thinking tips about envisioning this future society.

��Moore��s Law is a rule of thumb that states that the total number of components in semiconductor circuits doubles every year and a half to two years. A number that doubles every two years is an exponential function, going up to 32 times the original number in a decade, and a billion times in two generations, or 60 years. Scale-wise, it would be like if an idea created by a few people spread to the entire population of the world in two generations, or 60 years. Moore��s Law represents a paradigm shift to something completely different from linear development.

��Moore��s Law was proposed in 1965 by Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel, in an American technical journal. While the rate of growth in some areas, such as microfabrication technologies, has begun to slow, the number of elements in a single integrated circuit module still��astonishingly��still follow this law, two generations or 60 years after its proposal. Graphics processing units, or GPUs, a type of integrated circuit whose power has been demonstrated in their use for AI, also follow this law. A few years ago, a GPU consisted of some 21 billion transistors, a billion times more than when the integrated circuit was invented two generations prior. Since the number of neurons in the human cerebral cortex is estimated to be 14 billion, this means that the number of transistors on a single board has finally exceeded the number of neurons in the cerebrum. While in actuality the number of transistors should be compared not to the number of neurons but to the number of synapses, the fact still remains that we can now purchase an integrated circuit with an enormous system, equivalent to the scale of the human cerebrum in terms of the number of elements, for a million yen. And as you all know, these circuits have since advanced even further, and have come into common use in generative AI systems such as ChatGPT.

��In this way, Moore��s Law was a frighteningly accurate prediction of the future. However, at the time of its proposal, it was not anything very outrageous. The original text states that the prediction was made based on an extrapolation of four data points over the four-year period between 1962 and 1965. And while Moore did state that he believed the trend would continue over the next decade, up to 1975, he tempered this by saying that the future beyond that was uncertain. This great law, which predicted the future that would connect to today��s generative AI technology 60 years in the past, was something quite simple and humble. What it seems to be telling us is that we should be more easygoing about predicting the future.

��The fact that this future prediction, which entered the period that Moore called ��uncertain�� nearly 50 years ago, in 1975, is still valid today is testament to the tremendous traction that future predictions can have once they become mainstream. So many people gathered, collaborated, and combined their expertise, efforts, and ingenuity under the banner of Moore��s Law to produce enormous results, which in return led to economic traction and even greater advancements.

��My message to all of you who will be promoting new value creation in our society is to feel free to predict the future, and to expand your network of collaboration to include those who will be essential to realizing this future. There are many problems we face as a society, but it is my hope that you use the practical experience you have had at our graduate school to be bold and envision the future a decade or two decades from now. To realize this future, it will be essential to unravel the various issues we face that are so intricately intertwined. By gathering with and collaborating with others, and combining your expertise, efforts, and ingenuity, you will be able to help build systems for a peaceful and abundant society��the very kind of society described in our strategic direction.

��Congratulations again to all of you today. I wish you all continued success in your future endeavors.

Masahiro Yoshimoto
President, Kyoto Institute of Technology
September 25, 2024

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