#MITI

The full narrative of Japan's Fifth Generation Computer Project — the announcement that alarmed the world, the decade of work inside ICOT, the scientific contributions that were real, and the quiet failure that nobody wanted to acknowledge. The most audacious national AI programme in history, and what it revealed about the relationship between industrial policy, scientific vision, and the unpredictability of technological progress.

In 1982, Japan announced the most audacious AI project in history: a ten-year programme to build a new generation of computers based on artificial intelligence. The announcement triggered global panic. The United States and Britain launched emergency responses. And then, quietly, over the next decade, the project failed. How national ambition, geopolitical anxiety, and genuine scientific vision combined to produce one of the great misadventures of the technology era.