Japan Gen AI Instructions

Japan has taken a fairly lassie-faire approach towards AI, resisting calls for heavy regulation of emerging technologies in a bid to leverage the potential of AI’s practical applications. More importantly, a lightly regulated market allows greater international collaboration to solve some of its more urgent domestic issues, such as declining populations.

The latest G7 Summit in Hiroshima in May 2023 dealt more directly with emerging generative AI technologies, AI governance frameworks, and the roadmap for greater international collaboration on these issues. Two post-summit documents, the G7 Summit Communiqué and the Declaration of the G7 Digital and Tech Ministers’ Meeting, contain all the necessary information on potential cooperation on AI governance among the G7 countries.

According to the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, Japan is ranked 28th out of 63 countries in terms of technological knowledge. This comes after Chinese and US companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Microsoft, and Google have led the global development of generative AI services. Japan has been trailing behind in deep learning and more extensive software development, resulting in its failure to keep up with some of the other developed countries in terms of generative AI research and development.