Can Japan compete in the global battle for dominance in artificial intelligence and robotics that is under way? A long-standing strength in AI research gives the United States an advantage that is reinforced by the deep bench of AI talent at its numerous universities and tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.
China's government incentives and growing leadership in the mobile economy has led to a data advantage — its e-commerce giants like Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and DiDi have an unparalleled view into the minutiae of everyday economic activities across hundreds of millions of consumers, data that feeds into increasingly sophisticated deep learning systems that power AI-native applications ranging from news filtering to medical diagnostics.
Japan does not have to be left behind as the U.S. and China race ahead of the rest of the world. But building dominance in this new generation of technologies will require change and planning. The nation must leverage its unique economic and technological strengths, simultaneously catalyzing important changes in regulatory policy and innovation culture, while kindling a feeling of optimism about global success among the youth.
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