This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the "human touch," especially when it comes to service, so I can see how companies aren't jumping on to the hype. We're also pretty slow to adopt change.
Oh and maybe the shit exchange rate makes it expensive to use the service as everything is pretty much foreign tech.
Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the “human touch,” especially when it comes to service, so I can see how companies aren’t jumping on to the hype. We’re also pretty slow to adopt change.
And that's pretty cool, seems like a culture best suited for modern challenges.
I've heard\read there are many racist, paternalist, hierarchical and collectivist traits, but at the same time Japan apparently hasn't hit those honeypots most of the humanity has.
Weird how you say collectivist like it's a bad thing
I mean, one look at Japanese work culture should be all demonstration you need for that.
Work culture all over the world regardless of culture is fucked up.
I like the work culture in the Netherlands, on the whole, there's a focus on work/life balance. I get to spend a day per week with my kids and I only lose 30% of the pay of that day.
After I spend those days, which are 45 total, I can still spend a day in the week with my kid, unpaid. But my boss cannot block me from doing that and needs to keep my 40 hour contract intact for when I want to resume my full-time work.
Also I don't actually lose 20% of my pay, but due to government help I lose about 12% doing this unpaid day.
And that's pretty cool, seems like a culture best suited for modern challenges.
I mean, looking at the Lost Decades it seems to be quite the opposite. Sometimes it helps to take things slow, but other times you really have to think "come on get on with the times already".
ugh. "collectivist" is a word coined by western chauvinists. that's not a real dichotomy. your fucking Abrahamic countries are far more collectivist than us soulless confucianists
I’ve heard\read there are many racist, paternalist, hierarchical and collectivist traits,
We definitely have all that!
Also, I found it interesting that someone mentioned how you used "collectivist" as a negative feature of Japanese culture. While it certainly could be, it's actually nice to see when people are genuinely wanting to help each other. The problem is our hierarchical culture where some shitbag on top takes advantage of our collectivist mindset for their own gains.
*Everyone else is working unpaid overtime, why can't you?! *Almost nobody being worked overtime is going to say that. Workers will take it for the good of the imaginary "team" because some manager convinced them it's the right thing to do. Luckily, probably thanks to my Canadian upbringing, I've always been able to say no to ridiculous shit like this. That, and I work for myself, so the only ones who boss me around are my wife and kids.
Edit: Whoops, maybe collectivism isn't the right word for what I found to be positive after reading your other comment. Sorry, but I hope you got my point.
Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the "human touch," especially when it comes to service
Aren't they the ones that first came up with robot servers in restaurants? Or maybe that was South Korea?
It might actually be China. All the robots I see here are the one with the cat face and I'm pretty sure that's where they come from. We don have remote control robot cafes where people with physical/mental disabilities to serve you using avatar bots which is cool!
Japan also did that, but it mostly just for the uniqueness of the robot, not for replacing workforce.
This statement is in complete contradiction to the prevalence of vending machines for everything. Methinks you are romanticizing a culture you don’t live in by only seeing the positives you like.
Methinks you are romanticizing a culture you don’t live in by only seeing the positives you like.
That's kind of an insulting assumption as I'm Japanese and live in Japan. So while I may have a biased opinion, I wouldn't say it's romantisizing.
In fact, I'd say you're the one that seems to be making assumptions based on snippets of our culture that you see on the internet. The weird vending machines that sell letters from your pretend grandma to used panties aren't found everywhere you go — they're in specific locations for the novelty.
Also having regular vending machines for drinks and food doesn't exactly contradict my point. The vending machines are more for the customers' convenience. They're not installed specifically for removing human contact. Yes, we lose human contact as a result, but it's a tradeoff to better serve customers whereas most companies that deploy AI support agents probably do so to save a buck.
Sorry about the rant.
Good for them.
Country known for historically being resistant to rapid technological change is resisting newest technological change trends.
How surprising.
Not that surprising considering Japanese government only retired floppy disks in 2024 and fax machines are still in widespread use there.
Japan has been living in the year 2000 since the 80s.
And that's very good. You need a newer and better technology for the same job, if it does the same job better. Not for a different job with new "wow effect component" baked in.
We use pencils, pens and writing paper still.
It wasn't an option to have a "new and better" writing paper synchronizing all our records with some vault authoritative people have before. Now it is. Japan apparently has passed the test of people_not_ trying to move everything to that honeypot.
All hail Japan, can they please conquer us? Technically I live in a nearby country, except, eh, Moscow is kinda far from the far east ...
Weeeell... floppies have more downsides that upsides and could've been replaced ages ago (along with implementing backup policies). They could've at least migrated to data MiniDiscs. 😁
Faxes from what I've heard were mostly because back in the day it was easier to write Japanese on a paper and fax it... in the age of Unicode, fax-to-mail and alike... dunno, maybe.
I generally agree though, no point in adopting new stuff just because.
Japan Not Entirely Stupid Fucking Morons
ftfy
I take issue with this article using the language "lagging behind in the use of generative AI". That language seems to imply there is something wrong in this behaviour.
Wonder if that will end up helping in the longer term.
thing | thing, japan
It's a creative country. They don't need a slopbot to make substandard garbage for them.
Well, there’s no fax API so how would they access it?
In other news, Japan has an aging population.
if any country has an actual interest in replacing their disappearing population with AI workers, it would be Japan
Youmay not be wrong, but it reinforces the notion AI is a new tiktok fad and nothing truly useful
And do you think all the shrimp jesuses on facebook are made by and for young people?
Because they're not brain dead idiots perhaps ?
Use it for what? Generating a bunch of nonsense text that others have to waste time reading? Generating shitty images with fucked up hands and garbled text to use in stupid ads for worthless trash?
This is a "competitive advantage" not worth pursuing. Most AI products/services lose money and even if they didn't, they're creatively bankrupt as a whole and shouldn't be admired for squeezing money with lower quality.
Like I did not already like the way that country does things enough.
Yeah, their work-the-workers-literally-to-death culture is top notch.
That, and doing all they can to eliminate romance in their population. I wouldn't be surprised if they had the highest incel rate per capita in the world.
Japan is the only place ive seen ai ads and posters around town though
