The House of Representatives, Japan's lower chamber of parliament, passed a bill on Thursday to promote the development of artificial intelligence technology and take steps to mitigate its risks. The legislation is expected to be enacted during the current parliamentary session set to end in June after deliberations at the House of Councilors, the upper chamber. AI "will be the foundation of economic and social development and is an important technology from the viewpoint of security," the bill said.

Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour Patty Hajdu speaks with Lori Sterling, deputy minister of Labour and associate deputy minister of Employment and Social Development, as they appear at a Commons human resources committee hearing on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, Feb. 12, 2018. Federal officials overseeing billions in benefit payments to millions of Canadians are hoping machine learning tools can solve ongoing snags in the system. Federal officials overseeing billions in benefit payments to millions of Canadians are hoping artificial intelligence can resolve ongoing snags in the system. The government is looking to "push the boundaries" of what artificial intelligence can do to improve a variety of services, including the pace of benefit decisions to Canadians applying for disability pensions, say documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the access to information law. Employment and Social Development Canada is currently facing processes that are "slow, inefficient, inconsistent, and prone to error," reads a presentation about the AI efforts.

China is on the verge of a robotics revolution. In 2014 it has the lowest robot to worker ratio compared to that of its peers – South Korea, Germany and the United States. Today, that is changing as China is pivoting towards robotics. The Chinese government has laid out a 5-year plan that included robotics to steer economic and social development. It is estimated that the number of industrial robots in China has been growing at an unprecedented rate of 40% per year as the government plans to triple its number to 100,000 by 2020 to promote high-end manufacturing.