I recently bought a few Japanese books on the intersection of AI and social issues. AI×人口減少 by Keisuke Nakahara is one of those. Least to say, I have mixed feelings. Spoiler: definitely not worth the 1500¥ + tax I put into it.

Decreasing population

The book starts with a very nice round up of the decreasing population problem, especially how the issue has been pushed aside since the 80s and how apathic the country has been since then. This, in itself, was interesting but this is pretty much the only new information of the chapter. Though it might be because I already read about this issue in the past.

A focus on the US

Where the book quickly lost me is that beyond the first part described above, the main focus of the book switches to the US and partially to China. Japan is only then mentioned as “if this were implemented in Japan, this would be interesting.” or “Company X has an implementation project.”.

In a word, beyond the very first part, the book loses its focus on Japan, eventhough its subtitle is “これから日本で何が起こるのか”. More disturbing for me, it also loses its focus on decreasing population.

The focus on downsizing

This is the first topic which made me want to write again in this dead blog.

With all the discourse on productivity in the book, the focus is not how to maintain any level of service with a decreasing population or workforce but how can companies happily fire thousands of employees and close hundreds of locations, while the population and workforce is still there. How is this related to depopulation ? In the same fashion as in other countries, the author brushes away the lost jobs saying fired employees will find other job as disruption always ends up creating more, different jobs as it has always happened in the past.

You can choose one, but not both.

Innovation vs invention

Finally, one thing kept bothering me while reading the book. the use of “技術革新” as a synonym for innovation. Looking into my trusted dictionnary, the entry reads as “technological innovation”.

Ie, what we call in French “une invention”. Something technologically sounds and interesting but with no market use.

The 2.5” 60Gb Hard Drive by Toshiba was an invention. The iPod, build around it was an innovation.

The big difference? Marketing, thinking about the market and what the users might want. In a word: going beyond pure ingeneering and lab work.

And thinking about that, this focus on the pure technical idea of AI is everywhere in the book. Focus on the idea of AI. The different tools (software robots, RPA, chatbots…). The users or the workforce? meh

Even the chapter “How will our work change?” (私たちの仕事は動激変するのか) is from the point of view of the companies and how they can fire people. Will our life be made easier? Don’t care! Will we need new training? Don’t worry! Do we need to change our processes? Just use AI!

Sorry, this is not what I am looking for. Where is the human aspect of the book? This is a social issue. Quit focusing on the macro-economy.

The author is a corporate consultant to financial institutions. That makes sense. If the book at been advertised as “understand how AI will present investment opportunity for the next 5 years”, it would have been closer to its content. And I wouldn’t have bought it.

Final word

Meh

Disappointed