How Artificial Intelligence is Making Transport Safer, Cleaner, More Reliable and Efficient in Emerging Markets

In this chapter, the authors explore the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) disruption in emerging markets (EM) – countries that are harnessing technology much faster and more enthusiastically than many of their developed-market compatriots. Dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), AI technologies are disrupting at speeds that have no historical precedent. With the potential economic benefits of AI already clear, governments in many EM countries—including China, South Korea, Russia, Hungary, Poland, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia—are pursuing policies that will help leapfrog developed markets. However, there are risks including concerns that a potential global recession may slow the rapid growth that the likes of China and other EM countries have enjoyed thus far. Additionally, there are key challenges relating to social, ethical, and legal frameworks as well as a need for security policies.

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Toward an Affective Sense of Life: Artificial Intelligence, Animacy, and Amusement at a Robot Pet Memorial Service in Japan

Cultural Anthropology ◽

10.14506/ca36.2.03 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Daniel White ◽

Hirofumi Katsuno

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

Emotional Intelligence ◽

Emerging Markets ◽

Memorial Service ◽

Companion Robots ◽

Productive Method

This essay analyzes the organization of Buddhist memorial services for robot pets in Japan against the backdrop of emerging markets for robots equipped with artificial emotional intelligence. It demonstrates how an evocative “sense of life” (seimeikan) becomes both a target of design for robotics engineers and an affective capacity of robot users who care for and through companion robots. Documenting how users cultivate a sense of amusement toward robots that neither neglects nor negates analytical distinctions between the artificial and the living but rather playfully holds them together in the figure of a living robot, the article illustrates how practices of care become affective tools for understanding life altered by developments in AI. Such findings render animacy as an open and exercisable capacity, responsive to technoscientific change, and generative of theoretical inspiration for how anthropologists might similarly exercise affect as a particularly productive method of fieldwork within machine-inclusive multispecies societies. 抄録本論文は感情認識AI（人工知能）を搭載した一般消費者向けロボットの登場を背景に営まれるようになった日本におけるペットロボットの法要について考察するものである。特に「生命感」の喚起がいかにロボット開発におけるデザインのターゲットになると同時に、ユーザーがロボットとケアを介した関係性を結ぶ際の情動的能力の所産の対象にもなっているかということを明らかにする。ロボットと接するなかでユーザー達は分析的に対置される人工物と生命体との違いを無視したり否定したりするのではなく、むしろそれらを享楽的に結合させてロボットの存在を捉えるアミューズメントの心を高めている。この記述を通して、本論文はロボットへのケアの実践が人工知能の発展によって変わりつつある生命のあり方を理解する情動的手段になっていることを描き出す。このような知見は、対象物に生物性や生物らしさを感じるアニマシーの知覚が柔軟で状況に応じて発揮することが可能な能力であり、科学技術の変化にも応じることが出来るということを表しているだけでなく、機械を含むマルチ・スピーシーズ社会における有益なフィールドワークの手法として人類学者自身もどのように情動をうまく取り込むことができるかという理論的な閃きを生成する契機にもなったのである。

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