Japan intends to lead a discussion on artificial intelligence and its risks at the Group of Seven ministerial meeting on digital issues the country will host at the end of the month, communications minister Takeaki Matsumoto has said. The push comes as the AI revolution, including chatbots like ChatGPT, has brought with it a range of concerns, such as the unauthorized collection of personal data and its impact on learning environments. Matsumoto on Friday stressed the importance of multilateral efforts in advancing and regulating AI, saying at a news conference that Japan "would like to lead the discussion so its analysis and verification can proceed under an international framework." This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.

We consider the conjecture proposed in Matsumoto, Zhang and Schiebinger (2022) suggesting that optimal transport with quadratic regularisation can be used to construct a graph whose discrete Laplace operator converges to the Laplace--Beltrami operator. We derive first order optimal potentials for the problem under consideration and find that the resulting solutions exhibit a surprising resemblance to the well-known Barenblatt--Prattle solution of the porous medium equation. Then, relying on these first order optimal potentials, we derive the pointwise $L^2$-limit of such discrete operators built from an i.i.d. random sample on a smooth compact manifold. Simulation results complementing the limiting distribution results are also presented.

If Anna Matsumoto had listened to her teachers, she would have kept her inquisitive mind to herself -- asking questions, they told her, interrupted class. And when, at age 15, she had to choose a course of study in her Japanese high school, she would have avoided science, a track that her male teachers said was difficult for girls. Instead, Matsumoto plans to become an engineer. Japan could use a lot more young women like her. Despite its tech-savvy image and economic heft, the country is a digital laggard, with a traditional paperbound office culture where fax machines and personal seals known as hanko remain common.

Some people's lives are like horror movies. It's strange that, in an age that can create virtual reality, self-driving cars and intelligent machines, the world's third-largest economy can't solve the problem of human misery. More and more Japanese women seem to feel it is. Female suicide is sharply rising. National Police Agency statistics tell the tale, as far as numbers can tell it -- 651 women are known to have taken their own lives that month, up from 400-500 a month typically.

Against a backdrop of startling international developments, such as Brexit and the Hong Kong protests, Japan's financial sector is uniquely positioned to step out of the shadows of its competitors in Singapore and Hong Kong. This is the assessment of The Organization of Global Financial City Tokyo -- also known as FinCity.Tokyo -- which, on March 19, held its FinCity Global Forum at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi to explore the opportunities and challenges that await Japan in its pursuit to become a top global financial hub. Established in April 2019, FinCity.Tokyo is an organization that promotes Tokyo as a global financial hub and supports foreign financial services firms set up in Tokyo. In addition to the keynote and other speeches, the forum consisted of a series of panel discussions that invited industry veterans to discuss a wide array of topics, ranging from regional revitalization and socially oriented asset management to competition and collaboration among international financial cities. The first panel, centered on the theme of "Advancement of the Asset Management Industry and Global Financial City Initiative," invited panelists Yasumasa Tahara, director of the strategy development division at the Financial Services Agency; Kazuhide Toda, managing executive officer and chief investment officer at Nippon Life Insurance Company; and Oki Matsumoto, chairman and CEO at Monex Group Inc., to share their thoughts on how the industry can improve its asset management environment.

Personality has been identified as a vital factor in understanding the quality of human robot interactions. Despite this the research in this area remains fragmented and lacks a coherent framework. This makes it difficult to understand what we know and identify what we do not. As a result our knowledge of personality in human robot interactions has not kept pace with the deployment of robots in organizations or in our broader society. To address this shortcoming, this paper reviews 83 articles and 84 separate studies to assess the current state of human robot personality research. This review: (1) highlights major thematic research areas, (2) identifies gaps in the literature, (3) derives and presents major conclusions from the literature and (4) offers guidance for future research.

Tokyo-based AI Medical Service Inc., which is developing endoscopic software powered by artificial intelligence, announced today that it has raised $42.9 million in a Series B round. Japan's Globis Capital Partners, World Innovation Lab (WiL) out of Palo Alto and Sony Innovation Fund by IGV (Innovation Growth Ventures), and others participated in the financing. Combined with the company's last raise of $9 million in August 2018, AI Medical Service has now brought in about $57 million in venture funding since its inception in September 2017. In its own words, the company "develops AI technology that brings together the wisdom of Japanese endoscopic specialists and supports endoscopic examinations of gastrointestinal organs, such as the esophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine." Its goal is to more quickly and efficiently diagnose gastric cancer.

Misaki Harada wants to quit her job as a receptionist at a restaurant management company in Tokyo and move into marketing for an apparel-maker. But the 24-year-old said she wanted more than just a bigger paycheck. Her next employer would need to improve her quality of life. "If you ask me whether I prefer more money or more flexible working hours, I would choose more flexible working hours," she said. "I want to get married soon and start a family. I want to make sure I have time to take care of my children."

Toyota's Koibuchi (l) and Albert's Matsumoto signed the alliance agreement (Image: Toyota) Toyota Motor plans to invest around 400million yen in ALBERT Inc., a data solutions business. The resulting alliance for big data analysis will focus on development of automated driving technologies. ALBERT, founded in 2005 and based in Tokyo, currently employs around 100 people. It specializes in areas including the development of analysis algorithms and system introduction; supporting the use of AI; products and services using machine learning; and supporting the discipline of data science. It has recently been working on analysis of imagery in relation to automated driving. Ken Koibuchi, executive general manager in charge of developing automated driving at Toyota's advanced R&D and engineering division, said in a statement: "We believe that AI technologies are indispensable for achieving our vision of'safe and smooth mobility for all people'.

Bike sharing has a lot going for it. It's mass transit that's ultra-cheap, burns body fat instead of fossil fuels and is adored by venture capitalists. But the business model has hit a major snag: parking. Stringent laws against sidewalk clutter -- and cultural sensibilities that are easily offended -- make the problem more acute in Japanese cities than in places like Munich or Melbourne, where bicycles are piling up outside subway stations or turning up under bridges, sometimes to the dismay of neighbors and city officials. Bike sharing took China by storm in 2016, quickly becoming a novel tech export, and is now facing a backlash even in environmentally friendly places where you'd expect it to be embraced.