Above diagram suggests Vegeta suits may be involved as well. Photo: Cabinet Office
tech

Japanese government proposes cyborgs and robotic avatars for all by 2050

11 Comments
By SoraNews24

Needless to say, there isn’t much good news floating around these days. So it comes as a great relief that the Cabinet Office of Japan announced their initiatives for a future society in Japan under the Moonshot Research & Development Program. The program has the prime directive of creating a society which frees people from physical, mental, temporal, and spacial constraints by 2050.

▼ The program sees these freedoms as projections of current technological trends.

trends.jpg

This can first be achieved by establishing the technology needed to allow people to begin piloting robotic avatars by 2030. By combining AI, biotech, and an ultra-high-speed network, a single person could control up to 10 avatars at once to perform a single task from the comfort of their own home and regardless of their own physical limitations.

▼ If all this talk of “avatars” controlled by humans from remote locations sounds familiar, that’s because it’s just like the plot to that sci-fi box-office smash that we all know and love: "Tobor the Great."

For example, let’s say you wake up one morning and want to see what it’s like to work on a fishing boat in the high seas. Well, you can just jack into a team of avatars stationed on such a boat and try to get a nice haul of skipjack tuna. And once you realize it’s every bit as soul-crushing as Hemingway described, you can move on to something else.

This fishing boat can also be run both by people and autonomously from time zones all over the world 24 hours a day without stopping or exploiting people. You wouldn’t even need to put pants on, let alone travel to the worksite, sparing wear and tear on your wardrobe and the environment in the process.

▼ Once implemented, the number of usable avatars and their functions per person would steadily grow.

Screen Shot 2020-05-12 at 8.50.38.png

The exponentially increasing labor force of these robots would then lay the groundwork for what they call “Society 5.0” by 2050, in which people will have access to thousands of avatars which they can use to work together and create even more technological wonders to improve their lives.

It’s certainly ambitious, but they don’t call it “moonshot” for nothing, and Japan feels that its position as a nation with an especially rapidly aging and decreasing population, makes it the perfect environment for such a societal disruption to occur in first.

The prospect of making life one big Animal Crossing game was intriguing for many netizens, while others lacked faith that the government could pull off such a revolution.

“Cool, we’ll be like Ghost in the Shell.”

“It’s like a real ‘brain in a vat’ situation.”

“It will be life in VR.”

“That’s taking telework to the extreme.”

“I wonder if we’ll stop using fax machines by then too.”

“Yeah, they promised me flying cars by now too, so I won’t be shocked when this doesn’t happen.”

“We can’t even get driverless cars going yet. That technology’s been around for years!”

“‘Free from space, time, body, and mind?’ Sounds like we’ll all be dead by 2050.”

“So our government wants us to live in the Matrix?”

It’s true you’ll still encounter a fax machine from time to time in Japan, and in terms of robots, it seems we haven’t been able to do much better than Pepper in the past six years.

On the other hand, there have already been some advancements in line with the Cabinet Office’s proposals such as Dawn ver.β, a cafe staffed by robotic avatar waiters controlled by paralyzed people from their homes.

So maybe Society 5.0 isn’t as far-fetched as it appears. Much like the original moonshot, it’s just a matter of being bold and optimistic enough to make it a reality.

Source: Moonshot International Symposium Initiative ReportCabinet Office, via Itai News

Read more stories from SoraNews24.

-- Japan’s ‘agri-tech’ farming revolution

-- Japanese telecom company unveils robot that lets you see, hear, and feel through it【Video】

-- IBM Japan recruiting alpha-testers for actual VR Sword Art Online game 【Video】

© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

11 Comments
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the LDP can't even handle distributing masks. I have zero confidence that they will come anywhere close to accomplishing this.

11 ( +11 / -0 )

Sounds like someone's been reading The Peripheral and Agency by William Gibson. Great books.

the incongruous amalgamToday 07:30 am JST

the LDP can't even handle distributing masks. I have zero confidence that they will come anywhere close to accomplishing this

When the internet first appeared the then Japanese government actively hindered its development, they were so frightened of it. It wasn't until the US showed how it could be used for business that they finally embraced it.

JR East still doesn't have hot water or hand dryers in any of its stations.

9 ( +9 / -0 )

Is this a joke?

6 ( +6 / -0 )

I'd love to experience what goes on behind closed doors at those LDP policy meetings, trips to Yasakuni, meetings with lobbyists etc.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

No thanks.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

I am afraid at this time, japan won't be allowed to stay in the top world economy. We prefer people working. They need to eat. And this kind of competition (slave competition) will be ban from the world until the world eat and is free.

°

MMF

2 ( +2 / -0 )

More corruption as usual. Japanese bureaucrats are hungry as their Chinese counterparts.

It wasn't until the US showed how it could be used for business that they finally embraced it.

This lends the credential of Japan being American stooge.

Everything that America does first, Japan always follows. When Obama was nice with China, Abe goes to Beijing and praise Xi Jinping. When Trump was hating on China, Abe and Aso played anti-China circus in the Parliament. I am not saying China hate is bad or something, rather it is an obnoxious pattern of Japanese politics. It always follows and obeys whatever the US does like a good little kitty. Not one Japanese leader ever dared to question against the US severely.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

No Robots ! No Ai!

Fight the machinal animal threat!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

We prefer people working

Did you not read the article? People will be working. They'll be controlling these "avatars" remotely. The technology would be especially beneficial with travel restrictions (unable to drive, for example) and with physical disabilities (which the article also mentions is already something that exists: a cafe where robotic waiters are controlled by paralyzed people).

I really love the old anti-robotics rhetoric. They seem to assume that robots will "take our jobs" not realising that these robots will be controlled by people. And of course, people will need to fix the robots whenever there's a breakdown or something like that. Technology likes to breakdown, so there's always going to be a need for people to fix it.

While I believe that the target may be quite ambitious and unrealistic, the end goal is something I support. I'd like to see a world where upgrading yourself with cybernetics is so easy and so commonplace that it becomes a kind of fashion thing, like tattoos and piercings. Kind of like Ghost in the Shell but with less crime and violence and dystopia.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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