NVIDIA event: Shota Imai sees open models dominating non-competitive work

The conference, held in Tokyo on Nov 10, brought together speakers from academia and industry to discuss how AI agents are moving into practical use. A recurring theme was the need to balance cost-effectiveness with capability. A video message from Team Mirai leader Takahiro Anno, who was absent due to official duties, argued that simply using the most advanced frontier models is no longer sufficient, emphasizing ROI-aware model selection.

Imai's prediction builds on this by outlining a future where the choice of model depends on the task. He distinguished between highly competitive domains—where cutting-edge performance justifies the use of frontier models—and routine, upper-bounded tasks like paperwork, where open models are likely to dominate in the long run. This view aligns with other sessions that highlighted the rapid improvement of open-weight models and their potential to reduce costs and data exposure for enterprises.

Later talks explored the security implications of autonomous agents and practical deployments of local LLMs, but Imai's forecast offers a clear framework for thinking about where different types of AI models will fit in the business landscape.