Column by the President of Hitachi Research Institute, Mizoguchi
Society has been changed dramatically by digitization and the evolution of the Internet. With the rapid spread of the Internet since the mid-1990s, it has become commonplace for individuals to connect with each other online. However, when I was stationed in New York from 1993 to 1997, I communicated with Japan mainly by fax, and when I arrived at work each morning, my routine was to pick up and look through faxes from Tokyo that had overflowed from the fax machine and fallen onto the floor. The thermal paper of a fax machine curls up, so it is difficult to flatten out and read a fax—though the current generation probably has no idea what I’m talking about! Anyway, midway through my stay in New York, the personal computer was introduced, and it allowed me to communicate with Japan by e-mail. Although fax communication was nuanced toward the exchange of official documents between offices, e-mail made it possible to contact individuals, and I was surprised to find that I could make personal contact despite a difference of 10,000 kilometers and 14 hours. Using e-mail, I could be in New York and still keep in touch with gossip at the Tokyo office.
Mobile phones also began to spread in the 1990s, and from the late 2000s, voice-only mobile phones were replaced by smartphones, which became an essential tool in the business environment. Smartphones quickly made it commonplace to be able to contact people anytime, anywhere in the world, and to have constant access to a variety of information on the Internet. The number of worldwide smartphone users currently exceeds four billion. In Yasutaka Tsutsui’s “Genso No Mirai (Fantasy Future),” published in 1971, a creature that seems to be the successor to humankind wanders the Earth, and when it encounters some unknown phenomenon, an invisible database-like “collective consciousness” explains the background of the phenomenon directly to its mind. When I read the book in the 80s, I felt that scene was just a dream. However, today, whenever and wherever people have questions, they use their handy smartphones to search for the answers on the Internet—which promptly provides the answers. We live in a world close to Tsutsui’s fantasy future.
The ubiquity of the digital world opens the possibility of solutions to many social issues. Not only can we connect online, but we can multiply our options such as sharing knowledge and experiences, exploring and analyzing information, and sharing and speeding up work. Social issues such as environmental problems, declining birthrates, aging populations, geopolitical tensions, food crises, and energy problems are now management issues for companies. As one of those companies, Hitachi offers Lumada *: a collaborative creation mechanism that combines the virtual and real worlds to develop specific solutions from a variety of options. I recently visited the Lumada Innovation Hub Tokyo, located next to Tokyo Station, and I found it a place that connects wisdom and ideas across industries, space, and time. Although digital power is effective in solving problems, human power is essential for that power to flourish. Based on thorough two-way communication, Lumada’s design thinking—which empathizes with teams facing challenges, defines problems, and leads to solutions from unique ideas—is a human-centered approach to all intents and purposes.
Media continue to evolve, from print to radio, radio to television, and television to digital media. After each evolution, people become addicted to whatever is new. As children, we were told not to watch TV all the time . In a similar manner, today’s children are warned not to play online games too often and that social media is dangerous. It is said that regurgitating or copying and pasting information from the Internet is a regression of the intellect and that we should read more and think more. However, Socrates argued that relying on writing or reading will not lead to true wisdom. Thinking and talking for yourself is the source of wisdom. Taking his own advice, Socrates left no writings, and his ideas can only be found in the writings of his disciple Plato. Back then, even books were considered a medium that clouded human intelligence.
All media are external-storage devices, means of communication, and aids to thought. However, the special feature of digital media is that its ubiquity and manipulability mean that it can also be used as a platform. And now generative AI (artificial intelligence) is being added to that media platform. Although generative AI merely predicts what words will come next and arranges those words in a sequence, it appears as if it is thinking itself; consequently, rather than assisting in thinking, it seems to be substituting thinking. Is the future of humans entrusting everything we think to external media? If this were to happen, Socrates would be sad indeed. However, the words generated by generative AI are merely connections of possibilities; generative AI does not understand the meaning of the words it generates. Generative AI has not achieved the symbolic grounding in physicality, which is necessary to decipher the whole world through words. After all, real solutions cannot be derived without thorough human involvement. Finding ways to interact with AI effectively as a “supermedia”— without becoming addicted to it—will become a major theme in predicting a realistic future.
Search
Global