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Robots and AI Artifacts in Plural Perspective(s) of Japan and the West: The Cultural–Ethical Traditions Behind People’s Views on Robots and AI Artifacts in the Information Era

The Review of Socionetwork Strategies volume 15, pages 143–168 (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the meanings of robots and AI artifacts in our societies and cultures, in particular the question: ‘How do Japanese people and Western people understand and interpret the phenomena and problems happening around them such as human–robot interaction, the encounter with AI, especially regarding plurality of meanings and wholeness of life experience in the information era?’ This is a kind of topic of information ethics or IIE (intercultural information ethics) in a broad sense. We focus our attention on world views in the informatized environments by examining the related views and theories as well as our own empirical research. In addition to these points, we will compare Japanese survey data with data from other cultural–social traditions and we will examine how the Japanese ways of seeing matters and their emphasis on the matters in process of awareness can be considered to have potentially universal connotations.

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Acknowledgements

(This study was supported by the JSPS/STINT Bilateral Joint Research Project “Information and Communication Technology for Sustainability and Ethics: Cross-national Studies between Japan and Sweden” (JPJSBP120185411) and by JSPS KAKENHI Grant no. JP17K04113.)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Makoto Nakada

  2. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos

  3. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Ryoko Asai

Authors
  1. Makoto Nakada
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  2. Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos
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  3. Ryoko Asai
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Correspondence to Makoto Nakada.

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Nakada, M., Kavathatzopoulos, I. & Asai, R. Robots and AI Artifacts in Plural Perspective(s) of Japan and the West: The Cultural–Ethical Traditions Behind People’s Views on Robots and AI Artifacts in the Information Era. Rev Socionetwork Strat 15, 143–168 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12626-021-00067-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12626-021-00067-8

Keywords

  • Japanese existential views
  • Swedish existential views
  • Information ethics
  • Matters in process
  • Human encounter with robots