Japan’s Society 5.0: Going Beyond Industry 4.0

by Dr. Lorenz Gran­rath on Aug. 29, 2017 in Indus­tri­al R&D in Japan

Germany’s Indus­try 4.0 is a well-known buz­z­word. Japan has now intro­du­ced Socie­ty 5.0. Is this a mere one-step-ahead game, or is the­re more behind?

Industry 4.0

As the name alrea­dy indi­ca­tes, Indus­try 4.0 is loo­king main­ly into indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. Its main idea is the infor­ma­ti­on exchan­ge bet­ween com­pa­nies down to the machi­nes and processes.

Nowa­days, not only machi­nes but vir­tual­ly all objects are equip­ped with sen­sors that pro­du­ce infor­ma­ti­on about their sta­tus or loca­ti­on. This means that the­re is much more infor­ma­ti­on is avail­ab­le than the­re was befo­re. As the inter­faces are not yet clear­ly defi­ned, the amount of infor­ma­ti­on incre­a­ses and beco­mes impos­si­ble to be pro­ces­sed by humans.

This is whe­re arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) comes in. It has now beco­me not only smart enough to win games against humans, but also to extract mea­ning out of big data. As com­pu­ting power is doub­ling in less than every two years, AI power is incre­a­sing very quickly.

This opens up new pos­si­bi­li­ties, but also new dangers.

The ori­gin of Indus­try 4.0 lies in the High-Tech Stra­te­gy of the Ger­man Government. The latest, publis­hed in 2014, defi­nes six fiel­ds of priority:

• The digi­tal eco­no­my and society
• The sus­tainab­le eco­no­my and energy
• The inno­va­ti­ve workplace
• Healt­hy living
• Intel­li­gent mobility
• Civil secu­ri­ty

The first field, digi­tal eco­no­my and socie­ty, made digi­ta­liz­a­ti­on of the Ger­man Indus­try a very important and pro­mi­nent topic and ulti­mate­ly resul­ted in the term Indus­try 4.0.

Society 5.0

Today’s big data comes from sen­sors in objects, which inclu­de for examp­le machi­nes in indus­try, house­hold equip­ment, cars and mobi­le pho­nes. Smart­pho­nes track your loca­ti­on, social net­works your inte­rests and credit card com­pa­nies your com­mer­cial acti­vi­ties. All this data is too com­plex to make sen­se to humans, but AI can extract some conclusions.

The avai­la­bi­li­ty of such vast data in addi­ti­on to incre­a­singly power­ful AI leads to new ways of busi­ness, tech­no­lo­gi­cal and social inter­ac­tions. It will chan­ge not only the indus­tri­al sec­tor, but socie­ty as a who­le. This is also sta­ted in the Ger­man High-Tech Stra­te­gy, but Japan came up with a much bet­ter term that descri­bes what will hap­pen:
Socie­ty 5.0.

In April 2016, the Japa­ne­se government enac­ted the 5th Sci­ence and Tech­no­lo­gy Basic Plan. It covers many aspects, inclu­ding inno­va­ti­on pro­mo­ti­on and inter­na­tio­na­liz­a­ti­on. A focus point, howe­ver, is the deve­lo­p­ment of the socie­ty towards a Super Smart Socie­ty, the Socie­ty 5.0.

The under­ly­ing idea is that the rapid deve­lo­p­ment of infor­ma­ti­on tech­no­lo­gy now allows the com­bi­na­ti­on of cyber space – the infor­ma­ti­on – with the phy­si­cal space – the real world. The com­bi­na­ti­on of both are Cyber Phy­si­cal Sys­tems (CPS), objects of the real world enhan­ced and com­bi­ned with infor­ma­ti­on. This is expec­ted to bring about a major shift in society.

Socie­ty 5.0 will be the fifth step in the evo­lu­ti­on of the human socie­ty. After being a hun­ter (Hun­ting Socie­ty), men sett­led down in the Agri­cul­tu­ral Socie­ty. In the Indus­tri­al Socie­ty, mass pro­duc­tion pro­vi­ded pro­ducts for ever­y­bo­dy. Cur­r­ent­ly we are in the Infor­ma­ti­on Socie­ty, whe­re infor­ma­ti­on is the key fac­tor. Howe­ver, crea­ti­on of know­ledge from infor­ma­ti­on is still accom­plis­hed by humans. Yet in the fifth sta­ge of human socie­ty, this will be done by machi­nes, by AI.

Prime Minis­ter Shin­zo Abe intro­du­ced and pro­mo­ted the super smart socie­ty at the CeBIT 2017 com­pu­ter fair in Han­no­ver in March, whe­re Japan was the offi­cial part­ner country.

Support for the fast aging society

Japan is the fas­test aging socie­ty. In 2050 an esti­ma­ted 40 per­cent of the popu­la­ti­on will be 65 years and older. Peop­le in Japan also call it the super aging socie­ty. Chal­len­ges will not only be to have enough careta­king, new phar­maceu­ti­cals or assist sys­tems to stay inde­pen­dent. With more elder­ly peop­le, also the work­for­ce is decli­ning. Japan is alrea­dy famous for its robot deve­lo­p­ments, so it is no won­der that the solu­ti­on for the­se chal­len­ges will be smart robo­tics. As assist sys­tems could enab­le a pro­lon­ged inde­pen­dent life, robots can take over work in elder­ly care. And final­ly, AI can help to deve­lop new drugs as well as sup­port elder­ly peop­le in ever­y­day life.

Conclusions

Japan moved bold­ly by cal­ling the future deve­lo­p­ment Socie­ty 5.0. It implies that chan­ges will con­cern every aspect of socie­ty, not only indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. Ger­ma­ny intends the same, but the ten­den­cy got dis­tor­ted through the buz­z­word Indus­trie 4.0.

New deve­lo­p­ments of the Inter­net of Things, big data and AI also stron­gly depend on the open­ness to the out­side world. While a machi­ne could be adap­ted to fit into a fac­to­ry in a for­eign coun­try in the past, the inter­ac­tion now beco­mes more com­plex and needs to be embed­ded into the respec­ti­ve envi­ron­ment. If your ref­ri­gera­tor orders fresh beer direct­ly at the super­mar­ket by hims­elf in the future, it has to speak the local “com­pu­ter” language.