This series will focus not only on prominent accomplishments made in AI research and development but also on AIrelated events in society. As the first in the forthcoming series, this opening article features a historical background and outlines the contemporary AI research activities in Japan. It then highlights some recent prominent results from industry. Finally, a future perspective is given. The history of AI research in Japan goes back to the 1960s.

This blogpost is a round up of the various sets of principles of robotics and AI that have been proposed to date, ordered by date of first publication. The principles are presented here (in full or abridged) with notes and references but without commentary. If there any (prominent) ones I've missed please let me know. Asimov's three laws of Robotics (1950) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. I have included these to explicitly acknowledge, firstly, that Asimov undoubtedly established the principle that robots (and by extension AIs) should be governed by principles, and secondly that many subsequent principles have been drafted as a direct response. The three laws first appeared in Asimov's short story Runaround [1]. This wikipedia article provides a very good account of the three laws and their many (fictional) extensions. A robot must respond to humans as appropriate for their roles.

TOKYO (Reuters) - For decades, economists have tried to guess central bank policy direction by studying subtle changes in official language -- now, researchers are finding new clues on policy, not in the words of central banker but in their faces. In Japan, two artificial intelligence researchers, one from Nomura Securities and the other from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), are using software to analyze split-second changes in the facial expressions of Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda at his post-meeting press conferences. Their study found that Kuroda showed fleeting signs of "anger" and "disgust" at news conferences that preceded two recent major policy changes -- the January 2016 introduction of negative interest rates and the adoption of the so-called "yield curve control" policy September last year. The implication is that Kuroda was beginning to sense the constraints of existing policies about six or seven weeks before the central bank's board actually decided to change them, the researchers concluded. The research was presented last weekend to a subcommittee meeting of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI).

This article is the first report in the best of AI in Japan series. This series will focus on the prominent accomplishments made in the AI field, not only the research and development but also the AI-related events in society. As the first in the forthcoming series, this opening article features a historical background and the contemporary AI-research activities in Japan. It then highlights some recent prominent results from the industry. Finally, a future perspective is given.