August 2024 Vol. 22 No. 882024

https://www.ntt-review.jp/

View from the Top

Shinichi Yokohama, Chief Executive Officer, NTT SecurityHoldings▼Abstract

View from the Top
Shinichi Yokohama, Chief Executive Officer, NTT
Security Holdings

Front-line Researchers
Kyosuke Nishida, Senior Distinguished Researcher, NTT
Human Informatics Laboratories

In today’s connected society, ensuring safety and security in cyberspace is anextremely tough challenge. NTT Security Holdings provides security services toclients on the basis of its proprietary cyber intelligence andthreat-detection-and-response capabilities. We asked Shinichi Yokohama, chief
executive officer of NTT Security Holdings and chief information security officer ofthe NTT Group, about the company’s mission and strategy as well as his attitude asa top management.

Front-line Researchers

Kyosuke Nishida, Senior Distinguished Researcher, NTT
Human Informatics Laboratories▼Abstract

Rising Researchers
Mitsumasa Nakajima, Distinguished Researcher, NTT
Device Technology Laboratories

Feature Articles
R&D and Commercialization of NTT’s Large Language Model“tsuzumi”
NTT’s LLM “tsuzumi”
NTT’s LLM “tsuzumi” : Capable of Comprehending Graphical Documents
Commercialization of NTT’s LLM “tsuzumi”

Since ChatGPT, OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, wasreleased in November 2022, large language models (LLMs) have rapidly drawn
worldwide attention, and new LLMs have been announced one after another. While
the “bright side” of such LLMs, namely, high performance, has been brought toattention, their “dark side,” namely, increased energy consumption, has also been
pointed out. On November 1, 2023, NTT’s LLM called “tsuzumi” was announced. Itwas developed with a particular vision in mind, creating a future in which many andsmall LLMs having different characteristics are combined, rather than creating one
huge and monolithic LLM, to achieve social well-being through AI-humancollaboration. Thus, tsuzumi has made it possible to achieve the bright side andaddress the dark side of LLMs simultaneously, and its commercial service waslaunched on March 25, 2024. We interviewed Kyosuke Nishida, a seniordistinguished researcher at NTT Human Informatics Laboratories, about how thetsuzumi project was launched, features of tsuzumi, trends in LLMs, and his thoughtson the challenges of competing in a highly competitive market.

Feature Articles
R&D and Commercialization of NTT’s Large Language Model “tsuzumi”

NTT’s LLM “tsuzumi”▼Abstract

Global Standardization Activities
Report on ITU-T Industry Engagement Workshop

Practical Field Information about Telecommunication Technologies
Extending Usability of Copper Cables Installed Underground by Using a Cable-retracting System

In November 2023, NTT announced tsuzumi, a large language
model (LLM) based on NTT laboratories’ over-40 years ofaccumulated research in natural language processing. Thetsuzumi LLM excels in Japanese-language processing ability, andits key features include being lightweight and providing
multimodal support, which enables handling of non-text media. Its
lightweight model reduces power consumption and makes
on-premises use possible. Its multimodal feature enables
comprehension of photos and diagrams, distinguishing tsuzumi
from other publicly available LLMs. In this article, we give an
overview of tsuzumi on the basis of these key features.

Comparison of training cost (training data of 300B tokens)

Training cost
(million yen)(NTT estimate)

500

470M yen

400
300> 19M yen200> 1.6M yen

100
175B
Size of GPT-3
Inference cost
(million yen)

7B

0.6B

Comparison of GPU/CPU costs in on-premises environment

15(NTT estimate)

High-end GPU × 5

10

15M yenLow-end GPU × 1

0.7M yen

0.2M yen

175B
Size of GPT-3

7B

0.6B

5CPU × 1