Top AI Ethical Issues and Japan's AI Landscape

This assignment delves into the critical ethical considerations surrounding artificial intelligence, highlighting the top nine issues as per the World Economic Forum. It also focuses on the current state of AI in Japan, its integration with robotics, economic impacts, and global influences, drawing from sources such as Melissa's 'The State of AI in Japan' and Japan Times commentary.

The social economic and
ethical impacts of artificial
intelligence in Japan

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................i
1. INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................1
1.1 Definition of Artificial intelligence.......................................................................................1
1.2 The situations in Japan today................................................................................................2
2. REASONS...................................................................................................................................3
2.1 Expectation regarding AI technologies at global trends.......................................................3
2.2 Artificial Intelligence and its way in Japan...........................................................................4
2.3 Economic impact of artificial intelligence............................................................................5
2.4 Ethical impact of artificial intelligence.................................................................................7
3. EFFECTS...................................................................................................................................11
Governmental approach and its effect on local people.............................................................11
Effect on SME's.........................................................................................................................11
Effects to people........................................................................................................................11
4. CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................12
5. RECOMMENDATIONS...........................................................................................................12
REFERENCE ................................................................................................................................14
ILLUSTRATION INDEX
Illustration 1: AI technology............................................................................................................1
Illustration 2: AI technology integrated with Robotics....................................................................2
Illustration 3: Artificial intelligence ................................................................................................3
Illustration 4: Japan's leading Exhibition Specialised in AI!...........................................................5
Illustration 5: Impact on employment..............................................................................................6
Illustration 6: Economic impact.......................................................................................................7
Illustration 7: Global impact of AI...................................................................................................8
Illustration 8: Mini Robots With AI technologies...........................................................................9
Illustration 9: Robo having AI technologies will replace humans.................................................10
Illustration 10: AI technology will rule humans............................................................................12

ABSTRACT
Purpose of the report :The purpose of the research is to understand social economic and ethical
impacts of artificial intelligence in Japan.
The scope: It helps in developing the understanding related to the use of AI technologies and its
significance in the organisation.
Recommendation: There is greater need of making development in AI technologies regarding
deep and machine learning process. Further, there will be more advancement, robustness, and
safety in this areas so it should be made that seems to be beneficial for social diversity.
AI issues can be resolved if they are used by trained worker in an organisation.
Further it is recommended that AI technologies need to be understand carefully so that it can be
used effectively and efficiently.
Summary:The report is about the negative impacts that are happening in Japan due to artificial
intelligence. Japan is famous for the science and technological areas and is the most prominent in
consumer electronics, robotics and the automotive industry. They have more than 677,731
researchers and $130 billion USD budget for research and development which is third largest in
the world. Government have highly promoted the ICT facilitates as it will provide economic
growth that would account to more than 600 trillion yen GDP to the country However, as per the
people belief economical, socio-ethical issues that have grown due to implementation of this AI
technologies have been considered in the report. At last conclusion and recommendations are
provided for further understanding.

1. INTRODUCTION
Artificial intelligence are the technological tools that simplifies the time-consuming manual
work. It shows that AI technology play significant role in the life of human as they operate
different function of humans.
1.1 Definition of Artificial intelligence
Artificial technology which expect that robots that connect to the internet will be widely
used on a daily basis. The research on artificial intelligence is focus on the realisation of it,
which make possible for computers to possess intelligence and become enough capable to learn
and act independently (Robu and Flynn, 2017). As it play significant role in the future of
mankind in a wide range of areas such as education, culture, industry etc. However, this era is
not the right time where it must be implemented by scientist and researchers. Further, for making
sure that research artificial Intelligence is providing greater disadvantage to the human society
1
Illustration 1: AI technology
(Sources: Bossmann, 2016)

and they are ethically hurting the ethical motive and perspicaciousness of individual. The present
research will help in analysing the social economic and ethical negative impacts of artificial
intelligence in Japan.
Artificial technology it expects that robots to connect the internet will be widely used on
the regular basis. Further artificial intelligence help in making work easy for the people. Along
with this it plays essential role in making sure that it help in future mankind in different range of
areas such as education, culture, industry etc.
The below image shows that Artificial intelligence when merged with the robotics gives
outstanding outcomes. The technological aspects gets boosted with this integration.
1.2 The situations in Japan today related to the use of AI technologies.
2
Illustration 2: AI technology integrated with Robotics
(Sources: Melissa, 2017)

It is the sovereign island nation situated at part of East-Asia. In terms of economy it is
among the highest growth countries (3rd largest in world) and have higher GDP rank (Massotte,
2017). They are largest exporters (4th-largest by purchasing power parity) of auto-mobile,
electronics and similar materials. As per the statistic they have $4.841 trillion GDP as 2017. In
year 2016, they had population of 127 million which as per report of National Institute of
Population and Social Security Research, will be 42 million in 2110 (Boyd and Holton, 2017).
Moreover, being surrounded to ocean they face earthquakes, Tsunami and other natural as-well-
as man-made disasters. The country has in-mature society and there is need to identify solutions
to such emerging issues that will rise due to AI technologies in Japan. There are various
countries that have considered that AI technologies in Japan have negative impact on world as
scientist and business person will use this technology as per their own opinions and behaviours.
In Japan in AI technologies play significant role as they help in carrying out day to day activities
with the help of new technologies.
2. REASONS
2.1 Expectation regarding AI technologies at global trends
There are tremendous benefits to human society such as autonomous cars, SIRI etc. that
has provided assistance to their life. It reduces the labour, time and cost that was used earlier. It
is the new lifestyle that provides more convenient, prosperous, safer and secure life (Estévez,
2017). Moreover, it provides assistance in finding solutions to emerging issues as it can make its
own decisions. Challenges will rise as there will be more unemployment, there will be no
requirement of people in any sectors and it can also cause man-made disasters, can impact on
sustainable society. AI was developed by Association for the Advancement of Artificial
Intelligence (AAAI) in 2008-2009 in Japan (Dörr and Hollnbuchner, 2017). Till then there are
various progress made in this technological trends and many scientists are focusing over it so
that these negative impacts can be reduced.
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(Sources: The AI initiatives, 2017)
There are various artificial intelligence technologies that are been used in day to fay life. These
are known as NBIC technologies. Further, in this the machine language is converted to big data
files. Later with the help of supercomputing, the work gets simpler. However, it should be
recognized that there exist some global challenges and competitive factors hat may affect the
effectiveness.
2.2 Artificial Intelligence and its way in Japan
Japan is famous for the science and technological areas and is the most prominent in
consumer electronics, robotics and the automotive industry. They have more than 677,731
researchers and $130 billion USD budget for research and development which is third largest in
the world. AI in Japan is maintained by Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) which
was developed in 2014, based on relationship of AI and society (Leenes and et. al., 2017). As per
the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe there is no impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the
employment (Ishii, 2017). However, AI could actually destroy the country as it will lead to
4
Illustration 3: Artificial intelligence

unemployment, impact on personal and physical growth. People can use it for their personal
purpose. There are many students and children's that were affected by the mobile technology if
AI will by their they will not perform their physical tasks. Along with this, economic,
educational, and R&D viewpoints are also impact by these at SME's. Scientists have identified
four major areas where nondevelopment areas where this technology will impact (Kaneko,
Buesching and Newman, 2017). These areas are mobility, manufacturing, personal-services
included medical-car as-well-as finance, and conversation/communication.
 Mobility: There are various things included in it like moving persons and goods, e.g.,
autonomous-cars, easy to ride services, and things delivered by drones. For which many
people have to lose their jobs.
 Manufacturing: Greater advantages are provided to the manufacturing and production
industries, for illustration, factories working on automation, power-assisting suits, tactile
thinking robots and working with greater accuracy, and production-techniques. It will
lead to unemployment and low GDP growth.
 Personal services covering the areas like medical-care and finance-sector: It includes ICT
services for personal work, for illustration, e-commerce, web browsing services, health
care services that are performing self operation using those technologies in the areas.
Moreover, there are no support systems and/or administrations credit providers that will
not know how to use technology. People will suffer from more diseases and have poor
health.
 Conversation/Communication: ICT or robotics have greater communication technology.
There are various other examples such as anthropomorphic chat-bots, and dialogue-
agents. Moreover, safety will not be there and privacy will be impacted (De Spiegeleire,
Maas and Sweijs, 2017). It will also impact on the personal health.
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In Japan, there organized various events that helps in describing the significance of artificial
intelligence. The above attached picture reflects one of the leading exhibition specialized in AI.
2.3 Economic impact of artificial intelligence
There will be more industrial as-well-as economic activities that will degenerate as
employment and knowledge related to modern machine learning is not there among the people. It
will change the way business are performed in Japan. Moreover, it can be evaluated from various
aspects such as now there are large impact of high business to small number of companies as
they will have higher success and performance well using the ICT and other information society.
Though, Japan will decrease its impulsion and increase the business cost. All this has happened
because AI has reduced the labour power to operate. Automatic heavy machines are so perfect,
having appropriate action and quick leading to unemployment. However, at the time of
economically inefficient situation there is no need to implement the AI technologies linking to
ethically, legally, and societally.
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Illustration 4: Japan's leading Exhibition Specialised in AI!
(Sources: What is AI EXPO?. 2017)

With the help of integrating AL with the manual works, the quality and time effectiveness both
are enhanced. Further, it gives accurate results.
There are various changes which can be seen through this technologies. It has changed the way
human perform their work. Task assigned to individuals can be completed within fraction of
seconds which reduced individual role providing more unemployment. They are capable of
performing any and every action where humans needs to think about the consequences which is
negative point for them. In Japan unemployment and a labour shortage will occur at the same
time so those ability to work creatively can be completed by AI. For the companies it provides
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Illustration 5: Impact on employment
(Sources: Bossmann, 2016)

opportunities to compete at international level will be completely taken by large establish
business persons. These system are so in-reliable that they increase the dull, extended, and tiring
work along with this they will reduce the high-value performance. Now firms have greater time
for decision-making and work-flexibility but using AI it will be reduced. There is only need to
provide education so that person can know effectively how to use these opportunities. Changes
can be seen in all the sectors. Business and educational policies are facilitating AI technology
utilization as they want profit that will impact on local people and children. It has also generated
as labour in-mobility. It is one of the worst movement for the efficacious operation. For Japan its
government it is non-beneficial as it confronted labour-shortage, policies that provide high-value
industrial competitiveness.
The below image shows that there are various benefits observed in context to businesses and
employment in the country. Below picture states the perceptions of some postgraduate
employees working in on impact of AI on business and employment.
2.4 Ethical impact of artificial intelligence
The modification in the relationship between the artificial intelligence and humans and
the rising new sense of ethics. Human being have enough knowledge regarding the machines and
8
Illustration 6: Economic impact

tools and they are enough capable to utilise the machines and tools for making choices as it
depend on different situations. There is development in artificial intelligence as it lead to
enhance the cases on the basis of which they can use big data and can easily make right decision.
There are many disadvantage of the AI technologies if they are not used in effective and efficient
manner.
The above image shows the different states who are using Armed drones and different area
where armed drones are still not used and it impact.
Use of AI technologies support human in making right decision and in taking actions however in
future they will be able to take their own decision. However, there are many people who have
involvement related to the emotion about AI potential manipulation or operation of their mind
and behaviour (Estevez, 2016). As because many time AI technologies influence the human
behaviour and emotions they will be impacted due to it. Therefore, ethical discussion is required
so that awareness related to the AI technologies can be developed. The Japanese society for
artificial intelligence had formulated the ethical guideline as it applied on members (Robu and
Flynn, 2017). This guideline will help in serving a moral foundation for the member of Japanese
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Illustration 7: Global impact of AI
(Sources: Bossmann, 2016)

society so that they become more aware related to their social responsibility and it leads to
encourage effective communication with society.
Here below are provided the ethical guideline
 Contributing to in-humanity: Here role of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence is to
contribute toward the safety, public interest and safety for enhancing the humanity. It will
not assist them in protecting the rights of human and respect the cultural diversity and
even worse them. With the use of artificial intelligence it becomes hard to remove the
threat from human safety they will further rise.
 Respect the privacy of others: In relation to the investigation and development of the
artificial intelligence the members of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence required
The above image shows different types of robots who are performing effectively and efficiently
within the organisation. There are different types of Robot who are working in an different
manner they all are prepared for different roles.
 to respect the privacy (Veruggio, Opertoand Bekey, 2016). As it is a responsibility of to
kept personal information safely as per the rules and regulation. However, the use of AI
lead to bring inequality and discrimination as private data can be access by business
person and profit achievers. Therefore, it should be fairly use as per the ethical aspect so
that no human get harmed.
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Illustration 8: Mini Robots With AI technologies
(Sources: Anderson, 2016)


There are numerous social-ethical negative impacts that Japan has achieved from AI
technologies. Various areas such as improvement in productivity, increase the problems of
labour, birthrate issues, an ageing-population, safety and security and individually optimized
support using the technology. However, there are discussion among the people about the
different visions and ideas, fundamental social values which includes experts and social people.
Being a technology, it will play major role in decreasing the conflicts related to discrimination
and unbalanced-burden of social price relatives. However, there is need of greater need of digital
goods and services, literacy and educational rate. Using the technology, there are be
transportation services that are low cost as compared to taxis that provide assistance to socially
disadvantaged and disabled people. However, for such improvement there is need to overview
about the current sources of earners and new policies must be made based on imbalanced social
cost burden, literacy and knowledge rate, as-well-as assets of country. If these issues are not
thought of then there will be issues regarding the social division due to AI technologies.
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The above image shows how effectively different types of organisation are using AI technologies
in JAPAN. Along with this all the work of human are performed by the Robot.
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Illustration 9: Robo having AI technologies will replace humans
(Sources: Anderson, 2016)

There can be certain more negative aspects over the society due to AI technologies. For
example there social unhealthiness, conflict, and more dependency on such technologies.
Though, there will be increasing opportunities how if human tendency of being lazy and relying
on such technologies will increase consequence and diseases. Since, mobiles and internet have
reduced the social interaction and has increased the communication gaps. If AI technologies are
implemented at larger areas for human support then there can be higher tendency for people to
rely on them.
3. EFFECTS
Governmental approach and its effect on local people
As per the government, they have highly promoted the ICT facilitates as it will provide
economic growth that would account to more than 600 trillion yen GDP to the country
(Takenaka, 2017). Moreover, it will provide them development in almost all the areas such as
agriculture, auto-mobile, manufacturing, production, healthcare, retail and services,
transportation. It will literally provide disadvantages to people as there will be higher
13
Illustration 10: AI technology in Japan

unemployment, they will be controlled by high society people for their benefits and will reduce
the labour as-well-as production price for which people have to find new place of working.
Effect on SME's
There will be disadvantages to the Small and Medium- sized Enterprises as they can
international market will be taken by larger firms as they can produce more products and will
have impact on their economic growth. Moreover, there will be reduction in agriculture sector,
healthcare and service areas as people will be unable to facilitate companies for greater
personalisation.
Effects to people
The country has ambitious goals of starting fully automated vehicles by 2020 with the
help of Tesla Motors (Takenaka, 2017). Such services will impact to millions of cab and taxi
drivers. They are implementing it in every sector so that they can provide competitive leadership
in the world economy. However, there are higher issues related to the unemployment, job
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Illustration 11: Use of robot

security, personal living, network systems and security, cybercrime, liability, privacy, consumer
data-protection, intellectual-property rights, and individual social dignity that remain unsolved.
Though, there will be development through it but there are various disadvantages that people will
have through it.
4. CONCLUSION
From the above study, it can be concluded that Japan wants to have new socio-economic
trend by integrating the artificial intelligence and robotics. They wanted to change their industrial
revolution and external turbulence in the economic areas so that development can be made. They
have demographic pressure, energy and resource confinement through which they can develop as
societal models having highly sustainable and inclusive growth that will be profitable in reducing
their current social, economical and ethical issues. If those socio-political issues are not reduced
then there will be negative society growth that will be based on humanities and social-sciences,
education and the general public opinion. People of Japan are not promoting and developing AI
technologies for harmful impact on their employment. Overall there will be negative impact as
individual need to understand the technologies have impacted on our societies and community in
every aspects.
5. RECOMMENDATIONS
There are certain recommendations that needs to be considered by Japan, these are:
 It is recommended that Researchers-and-engineers are required to focus high level of
professional ethics, accountability, and visualization.
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Illustration 12: AI technology will rule humans
(Sources: Anderson, 2016)

 There are increasing cases of cybercrimes so scientists-and-engineers must focus on
privacy protection, controllability, security and transparency.
 AI technologies are based on machine learning so they must promote humanity, social-
sciences, and research collaboration related to socialite benefits.
 There is greater need of making development in AI technologies regarding deep and
machine learning process. Further, there will be more advancement, robustness, and
safety in this areas so it should be made that seems to be beneficial for social diversity.
 AI issues can be resolved if they are used by trained worker in an organisation.
 Further it is recommended that AI technologies need to be understand carefully so that it
can be used effectively and efficiently.
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REFERENCE
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robotics and artificial intelligence really mean social transformation?. Journal of
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De Spiegeleire, S., Maas, M. and Sweijs, T., 2017. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of
Defense: Strategic Implications For Small-and Medium-Sized Force Providers. The
Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.
Dörr, K. N. and Hollnbuchner, K., 2017. Ethical Challenges of Algorithmic Journalism. Digital
Journalism. 5(4). pp.404-419.
Ema, A. and et. al., 2017, May. Breaking Down Silos: Involving Various Researchers for
Driving HCI Research. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts
on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 837-847). ACM.
Estevez, P. A., 2017. Ethics and the Social Impact of Computational Intelligence [President's
Message]. IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine. 12(3). pp.4-5.
Ishii, K., 2017. Comparative legal study on privacy and personal data protection for robots
equipped with artificial intelligence: looking at functional and technological aspects. AI
& SOCIETY. pp.1-25.
Kaneko, Y., Buesching, C. D. and Newman, C., 2017. Japan: Unjustified killing of badgers in
Kyushu. Nature. 544(7649). pp.161-161.
Leenes, R. and et. al., 2017. Regulatory challenges of robotics: some guidelines for addressing
legal and ethical issues. Law, Innovation and Technology. 9(1). pp.1-44.
Massotte, P., 2017. Ethics in Social Networking and Business 2: The Future and Changing
Paradigms. John Wiley & Sons.
Robu, V. and Flynn, D., 2017. Artificial intelligence: Outsmart supply dips in renewable energy.
Nature. 544(7649). pp.161-161.
Veruggio, G., Operto, F. and Bekey, G., 2016. Roboethics: Social and ethical implications. In
Springer handbook of robotics (pp. 2135-2160). Springer International Publishing.
Online
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Anderson, R. M., 2016. Robot Babies From Japan Raise Questions About How Parents Bond
With AI. [Online]. Accessed through:
<https://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/robot-babies-
e1476724644754.jpg>. [Accessed on 17th October 2017].
Bossmann, J., 2016. Top 9 ethical issues in artificial intelligence. [Online]. Accessed through:
<https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/top-10-ethical-issues-in-artificial-
intelligence/>. [Accessed on 17th October 2017].
Melissa, 2017. THE STATE OF AI IN JAPAN. [Online]. Accessed through:
<https://www.apexkk.com/en/2017/05/08/state-of-ai-in-japan/>. [Accessed on 17th
October 2017].
Takenaka, H., 2017. Two winds are blowing through Japan: The gale-force Fourth Industrial
Revolution and external turbulence are buffeting the economy. [Online]. Accessed
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commentary/two-winds-blowing-japan/#.WeWNu3UjEso>. [Accessed on 17th October
2017].
What is AI EXPO?. 2017. [Online]. Accessed through: <http://www.ai-expo.jp/en/>. [Accessed
on 17th October 2017].
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