Jizai Body Robotics Based on Asian Thought

Completely new to me, despite our long look at Asian tech. 

EAST ASIA AND OCEANIA REGION SPECIAL SECTION 

JIZAI Body: Human-Machine Integration Based on Asian Thought  By Masahiko Inami

Communications of the ACM, July 2023, Vol. 66 No. 7, Page 91   10.1145/3592539

Person wearing Jizai robotic arms    Credit: Social Digital Cyborgs

"JIZAI Body"2 allows each person to live as they wish by controlling their natural body and altered robotic body parts. The Japanese term "jizai" originates from the Sanskrit word "isvara," which means supreme being free from earthly desires and constrains. JIZAI Body emphasizes the transformability of physical bodies and the effects on spiritual and internal minds fostered in Asian spiritualities such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and others, beyond enhancement or augmentation contextualized in Western cultures.

For example, a wearable robotic limb system called JIZAI ARMS4 (see Figure 1) allows social interaction between multiple wearers and explores communication between them. Wearers can exchange the arms and share the body parts. A robotic sixth finger (Figure 2) enables humans to embody a robotic finger independently from the innate fingers.3 It has also been shown that humans can embody supernumerary robotic arms and feel them as their own limbs in a virtual reality environment.4

The uniqueness of JIZAI Body research lies in its investigation of what society will be like when people who acquire JIZAI bodies interact, and in its scientific elucidation of JIZAI states. It raises the question of how people's body image will change in the JIZAI society. Both the realization of JIZAI bodies based on Asian thought, and the scientific clarification of JIZAI states, is required.  .... '

Asia's Opportunity for Generative AI

Expected, especially with regard to delivering multi lingual Generative results. 

ACM NEWS

Asia's Opportunity for Generative AI

By MIT Technology Review, June 16, 2023

The skyline of Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, with a view of Mt. Fuji.

The key promise of generative AI is to streamline virtually any routine language- or process-driven task, supporting the capabilities of humans while freeing up more creative and productive uses of time.

Credit: Morio/Wikimedia Commons

Suddenly, everybody is talking about generative artificial intelligence (AI). (Disclaimer: this article is written by a human.) The idea of software that generates dynamic, customized content is exciting. While chatbots have existed for years, a rapidly expanding suite of generative AI-based image, video, and text generators such as DALL-E 2, Fotor, Runway, AlphaCode, and ChatGPT (just to name a few) have the potential to democratize AI and put it into the hands of every person and every organization. Integrating these into mainstream software products in the form of "co-pilots" to assist in everyday tasks hold even more promise.

Generative AI offers particularly strong potential as an economic catalyst across Asia, building on advanced levels of digital adoption. Already, India and China are global centers of tech talent. Japan, Korea, and Singapore lead in smart cities and robotics, while a vibrant and growing startup ecosystem flourishes in Beijing, Jakarta, Bangkok, and beyond. All this provides a foundation for the region's developers to create the next wave of locally relevant solutions.

Implemented responsibly, generative AI stands to create a ripple effect—one that transforms industries, fosters productivity and innovation, and improves billions of lives. So, as the technology reaches an inflection point, what are some of its main uses and early success stories in Asia? And how should the region's organizations prepare to innovate?

From MIT Technology Review

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Ethics of AI in Asia

 How will this differ from Europe and the US?

Public and private actors in Asia are working to define regulatory frameworks, build a trusted AI ecosystem, and maintain harmony between humans and machines.
by MIT Technology Review Insights

Produced in association with ADP (Founding sponsor), IMDA (Gold sponsor), Genesys, Splunk, Asia School of Business (Silver sponsors) ... 

Globally, future outlooks for artificial intelligence (AI) swing between two extremes—excited anticipation about the positive impact AI will have on economies and societies, and deepening fear of its potential to disrupt livelihoods and do harm. In Asia, governments and civil society groups are concerned about defining regulatory frameworks to guard against the latter, and all ecosystem experts are grappling with how to steer AI toward the former, more socially advantageous directions. On balance, however, the Asian business leaders surveyed for this report have great optimism about AI’s positive effect on their businesses, societies, and individual well-being. .... "

Asia's AI Agenda

My recent interaction with the Asian components of this have left me impressed.  The below is an abstract with links to the complete report.  And beyond to link to managing change in the analytics and machine learning  world, which relates to my Columbia course.   Will be reading.

Asia’s AI Agenda: Executive Summary
This synopsis offers highlights from a recent survey of senior executives about trends in artificial intelligence and robotics are affecting Asian businesses. by MIT Technology Review Custom, International Markets December 1, 2016  in partnership with  ADP

Asia-based senior executives at global companies believe that the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics on their business performance in Asia will be profound and positive—and will be felt sooner than we may think.  ...  " 

Global Innovation Moving to Asia?

Innovation moves east.

" ... This is also the first time that a Chinese company, Huawei, has made the list. Huawei is a company in the telecommunications sector. One reason for China’s absence in previous lists could be that, even though it filed for more patents than either the US or Japan, less than 10% of its patents are international patents.

The progress of Asian companies seems to go along with an increased presence of companies from the electronic and semi conductors industries (21 companies), IT (13) and telecommunications (7). Asian companies have risen up, embracing persistence and a long-term view with the support of a well coordinated government policies.

Companies from the automotive, aerospace and transportation industries are less present among the Top 100 innovators.

The Oil industry is completely absent as Exxon Mobil and Chevron have not made the list this year. ... " 

Drinkable Cosmetics

In Cosmeticsdesign: 
Popular in Asia, "nutricosmetics" could start to make a splash in the West, trend watchers say. The beauty drinks, some of which contain antioxidants, collagen and other good-for-the-skin ingredients, haven't yet taken hold in the U.S., but market research from NPD Group suggests the potential is there.

Accelerating the Speed of Intelligence for Fast and Flexible Results

More on flexible and quick forecasting  From  A report prepared by CFO Research Services in collaboration with SAP:  September 2011.  " ... Accelerating the Speed of Intelligence for Fast and Flexible Forecasting Engaging the business for better results Confronting a stubbornly volatile global economy, the finance leaders at many major corporations have been driven to rethink their well-established processes for plan-ning, budgeting, and forecasting. Their goal: to infuse those practices with increased flexibility, enabling the finance function to detect—and capture—marketplace realities that seemingly can change daily. By surfacing such issues quickly, companies have the chance to address them before they grow into full-blown crises that can only be addressed effectively, if at all, by costly compensatory action. For this report, CFO Research Services conducted in-depth interviews at companies that are focusing on overhauling their entire planning, budgeting, and forecasting systems. We interviewed six CFOs and senior finance executives from three different regions of the world: Asia: Olam International (Singapore), PT Tigaraksa Satria, Tbk (Indonesia) Europe: BP Lubricants (UK), Atlas Copco (Sweden) United States: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Under Armour ....

L'Oreal Talks Global Marketing Direction and Practices

In AdAge:   Cosmetics giant L'Oreal talks their global marketing practices.   "...Call it the new Zen of global marketing. On one hand, L'Oreal seeks more products and marketing ideas from places in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where it expects most of its next billion consumers to come from in the next decade. But Mr. Menesguen's job is also to find marketers doing things right at any of L'Oreal's far-flung outposts and then spread the best practices around as quickly as possible throughout the company.... "

Retailer Innovation in China

MJ Perry about Innovation in China.   Where he quotes:  WSJ Asia Technology article "China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here"  ... How likely is it?   Our own experience with retail  innovation in China seemed to indicate their desire to copy rather than come up with things that were truly  new.  Yet once the direction was chosen, they could be remarkably tenacious.   They could be unabashed about taking advice,  as consultants we were shown in the annual report of a major Chinese retailer.

Institute for Mobile Markets Research

Just introduced to immr, the Institute for Mobile Markets Research.   See their site for more:

" .... immr is a research and consulting firm providing research and advisory services to leading companies in mobile, technology, and other industries. Led by Dr. Phil Hendrix, immr conducts research and advises clients in North America, Asia, and Europe. We employ sophisticated research methods to uncover and verify opportunities for innovative new products, services and applications, many of which are "new-to-market."  ... "

Physics of a Flower's Bloom

Mathematicians build a model of flowers' blooming.  An unexpected and magical thing.   I hope this kind of modeling has other applications.  Surely it must have.  Inspired by spring in my garden, picture at the right. " ... Not content to just watch flowers dance in the breeze, Harvard physicists have described for the first time how flowers generate the forces needed to curl open come springtime. In the asiatic lily (Lilium casablanca), this poetic blossoming is driven by skewed growth at the edges of petals, the team reports online Mar. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ... "  

The Rise of the Service Robot

The past and future of the US Robotics Industry in a good BusinessWeek article. " .... U.S. robotic companies have regained their strength, but face tough Asian and European rivals in the service robot market ... " .   I had watched their downturn, along with US machine tools, and then some unexpected developments in home robotics.  Can they come back?

Publishing in the Digital Era

Fascinating statistics and surveys in this study by Bain & Company:
Publishing in the digital era
y Bain partner Patrick Béhar and Bain managers Laurent Colombani and Sophie Krishnan
A Bain & Company study for the Forum D'Avignon

Is the publishing industry next in line to experience digital turbulence? Will new reading platforms provide the press with an opportunity to restore its economic equilibrium? Bain & Company conducted a survey of nearly 3,000 consumers across North America, Europe and Asia to evaluate the migration of printed content to digital formats. The findings help to decode new reading behaviors and begin to assess their economic implications on the book-publishing and press industries ... "

Procter & Gamble Innovation in Asia

A very good HBR article on the topic.  Bruce Brown, P&G's CTO, talks about the challenges of the future for a global company.  A number of interesting specifics are addressed. 

P&G Innovation Center in Asia

Procter & Gamble continues to open new innovation centers. Increasingly focused to region and goal. Just begun in Singapore

" ... the LWC-S is an independent innovation research center focused on revolutionizing product design and development for consumers aged 50 and above in Asia. It is an extension of the Live Well Collaborative in Cincinnati (LWC-C), the breakthrough business-academia partnership model pioneered by P&G and the University of Cincinnati in the United States and based on P&G's Connect+Develop open innovation model ... "

Tomorrow, June 15, is GS1 MobileCom Day

Always informative value from GS1. Have worked with them for a number of years and reported on their activities here:

Tomorrow (Tuesday 15th June) is GS1 MobileCom Day!
Local conferences, workshops and demos are taking place in over 35 countries worldwide. You can participate by joining one of 3 global webinars. To register, just visit http://www.gs1.org/mobilecomday2010.

Asia-Pacific Webinar: IBM: "The Smarter Shopper" / SAP: "Mobile and retail"

Europe/MEMA Webinar: L'Oréal: “The mobile consumer” / Deloitte: "Informing Shoppers"

Europe/Americas Webinar: Kraft: 'iFood App" / Ogilvy: "Advertising 2020" ... "

Rise of Asia

Astute colleague Wim Van de Velde points me to this TEDIndia talk where Hans Rosling uses Gapminder charts to point out the rise of Asia. ' ... Hans Rosling was a young guest student in India when he first realized that Asia had all the capacities to reclaim its place as the world's dominant economic force. At TEDIndia, he graphs global economic growth since 1858 and predicts the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US ... ' . Nice piece.

Virtual Goods

Dave Knox points to a slide presentation at the recent Virtual Worlds conference on Social Gaming and virtual goods: Virtual Goods in Asia. Very useful statistics. Again useful hints about how to provide incentive for complex tasks. Thinking that some of these ideas could also be used to alleviate some of the seriousness of the enterprise and replace it with unbridled creativity.

Social Media in Asia

Another case study, here concerning big CPG in Asia, Unilever is using a number of methods, especially in beauty brands using Facebook based activities and engaging bloggers.