Weak in Leading AI Regulation

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shows his significant interest in artificial intelligence. He has been making efforts to lead international discussion over AI. However, the discussion in Japan has not catch up with the world. While Europe and United States focuses on the regulation against AI, Japan mainly recognize AI as the promoter of economic growth. As the result, human rights would be left behind.

Kishida joined the AI Safety Summit in United Kingdom through online. “As the chair country of Group of Seven,” said Kishida in the summit, “Japan deals with making international rules on advanced AI system in the context of the Hiroshima AI Process which Japan led to establish, and I firmly believe it will make a common ground for making global AI rules.” He focused on his leadership in international community.

 

G7 leaders issued a statement on Hiroshima AI Process last month, which stressed “the innovative opportunities and transformative potential of advanced AI systems,” also recognizing “the need to manage risks and to protect individuals, society, and our shared principles including the rule of law and democratic values, keeping humankind at the center.” Kishida reported about it in X, former Twitter, saying Japan would contribute to making international rule on generative AI.

 

However, international concerns are not much more about taking opportunity for innovation than securing human rights. The Bletchley Declaration, agreed by the leaders in the AI Safety Summit, recognized that “the protection of human rights, transparency and explainability, fairness, accountability, regulation, safety, appropriate human oversight, ethics, bias mitigation, privacy and data protection needs to be addressed.”

 

The President of the United States Joe Biden issued an executive order which would require the developers of the most powerful AI systems to share their safety test results and other critical information with the US government. The White House calls the order “the most sweeping actions ever taken to protect Americans from the potential risks of AI systems.”

 

European Union is working on the first regulatory law on AI, which aims to bolster regulations on the development and use of AI. The proposed AI Act of EU focuses on strengthening rules around data quality, transparency, human oversight and accountability, also aiming to address ethical questions and implementation challenges in various sectors ranging from healthcare and education to finance and energy.

 

Different from the risk-based approaches of US or EU, Japan can be said to taking an opportunity-based attitude. According to the data by Cabinet Office of Japan, the government spent the budget for dealing with the risks of AI only as much as ¥1.06 billion, while it appropriated ¥60.1 billion for promoting use of AI and ¥56.8 billion for the development of AI.

 

Although the government established AI Strategy Conference in May, the points they discussed on the risks were assessing the risks and exercising governance by developers, suppliers and users, considering the framework for dealing with the risks, or referring to foreign examples when current laws cannot deal with. There is no viewpoint for taking determined action to protect the people from AI. Japan looks too weak to lead the world on AI regulation.

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