Another artificial intelligence-related exhibition will be held in Osaka next week. The second Kansai AI and Business Automation Fair features such AI-assisted services as robotic process automation-based labor saving and developing industrial robots with "deep learning" technologies. Here they go again.
This is the third AI boom in Japan. Unlike the first two booms in the 1950s and '80s, however, this time seems to be real. Recent technological breakthrough in image recognition, deep learning and big-data processing capacity is making this happen. Unfortunately, in the case of Japan it only happens in the private sector.
As a political scientist specialized in national security strategies, I am not satisfied with such AI applications in Japan. While enormous amount of human and financial resources has been invested in other major nations on the studies of military applications of AI, Japanese AI experts, to my surprise, don't seem to be interested.