When Sony CSL was founded, we declared that our philosophy was to conduct research for the future of humanity. But the time has come to take an extra step. Our mission now is to conduct research for the future of humanity and our planet.

In these keynote, I will be giving a general overview of our research activity, discussing why we have updated our mission statement, and introducing our concept of Global Influence Projection, a key message of this Open House.

My goal is to address society-wide mental health issues, and my daily research involves exploring the underlying mechanisms of the brain and related healthcare interventions. In this session, I will discuss a particular area of focus in my research: anxiety.

Why is it so hard for us to live a life free of mental anxiety? A crucial fact is that anxiety functions as a shield, a mechanism of the brain that defends us from various types of danger. In order to study the mechanisms of the brain in any detail, we must redefine complex mental phenomena in simple ways. But if our research designs are too simple, we find it hard to map our findings on to the mental phenomena we observe in the real world.

I see one of my most important research goals as not simply understanding the mental health issues from which we suffer, but translating that understanding into methods of care. To achieve this goal, I have been identifying the factors that can bridge the gaps between conventional research and the real world, and studying them carefully one by one.

I joined CSL in 2021 and have begun research into compact robots that allow anyone to perform complex, high-precision tasks at the μm level easily. There is no end to the potential applications for high-precision robotics technology: parts machining and assembly in industrial factories, chemistry experiments at research institutes, microsurgical medical procedures, and more. They all require highly accurate work, precise reproduction of actions at a sub-millimeter level. And for all robots, (1) safety, (2) size/weight, and (3) price are always important points of discussion. I'll elaborate on these issues below, using the example of a surgical robot. This presentation will discuss my research focusing on R&D activities and their future clinical use.

The zone of optimal learning for humans, artificial agents, or the scientific process itself is at the frontier between success and failure. It is said that "if you are not failing, you are not trying hard enough;" what happens when we apply this philosophy to various complex systems?

In this talk, I present the two major axes of my activities as a researcher. The first part focuses on initiatives to kickstart revolutions in science communities, based on known failures in the scientific process: distributed social experiments in science organizations, a new publishing platform, and a new type of scientific contest. The second part details experiments that harness failure in complex systems such as Reinforcement Learning agents and predictive Deep Neural Networks in order to understand their biological counterparts.

A blockchain is merely a distributed ledger, but in recent years a lot of technological innovation has happened to promote the concepts of decentralization and trust in a transparent manner. While the most prominent applications of the technology present obvious pitfalls (the biggest being energy use for chains based on obsolete Proof of Work schemes), the ideas behind the technology merit to be explored for what they bring to the table. In particular, the idea of a distributed database across all activities of a company to act as a simple way to access relevant information for the interested partes (from business partners to customers). From supply chain to warranty information, could a company as diverse as Sony provide a solution to enable quick and easy access to the data, authorize new transactions on top of that data, and even provide new experiences based on this technology. Moreover, this begs the question of a corporate currency: if a company is managing all its transactions based on a technology that is used and most widely known for managing currencies, what if Sony had its own currency?

As we see with the rise of the baby tech industry, childcare and technology are growing ever closer. However, most of this involves at-home childcare. In Japan, where nuclear family units are the norm, knowledge about childcare often is not shared among communities, and so the need for dedicated nursery and daycare facilities continues to grow. I do work in this general field, which I call Hoiku Tech. Childcare facilities in Japan have institutional and cultural peculiarities that make it difficult to test out new technologies and bring rapid improvements to day-to-day operations.

For this talk, I have invited Mr. Hachiro Suzuki of Kuraki Nagata Nursery School and Dr. Midori Takahashi, Project Research Associate at the University of Tokyo’s Center for Early Childhood Development, Education and Policy Research (Cedep) to discuss the approaches taken thus far by researchers in this field, and the technological developments on the horizon.

My research involves the extraction of causal relationships in order to maximize use of the information that is latent within data. We have developed a suite of proprietary algorithms and technologies called CALC, which we have applied to actual data analytics work. Sony Group businesses have been using it successfully for more than five years now, and we are continuing to promote its adoption. In 2017, a joint venture of three companies—Information Services International-Dentsu (ISID) Ltd., Koozyt Inc., and Sony CSL—began offering services including technology licensing and data analytics consulting, and CALC has been implemented at many companies in the manufacturing and service industries. If you are thinking about using this sort of data analytics framework in your own business, we will be offering a general explanation of CALC and a discussion with actual users. For discussion, I have invited Mr.Eisuke Ishii from Sony Assurance and Ms.Ayako Akama from Sony Corporation who are the actual users of CALC.

For a long time now, Sony CSL has engaged in research on the evolution and structures of language, and also on machine learning. We have used our technologies in these fields to develop customer support services in collaboration with Bell System24 Holdings (Bell24HD), a company with many years of firsthand experience operating contact centers.

In this session, special guest Shinsuke Kageyama, the CIO and CTO of Bell24HD, will discuss his company's hybrid approach to people and new technology, and our collaboration on the construction of its Cybernetics Contact Center. After that, we will give an overview of current development work.

aSSe22 project of Sony CSL develops innovate core technology and impacts on investment management industry as a "Good Outsider" after the project to apply artificial intelligence with Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) Japan. At the open house, it presents the following agenda:

"What is aSSe22 project?" -Highly diversified team in terms of capability, career and working style-

"Does AI take over job of rating agency?!" -Capability portfolio between human and AI-

"What aSSe22 educate at a forest, not at the traditional financial district?" -Program of finance and AI at International Christian University and next step-

We - Frank Nielsen, Michael Spranger, Lana Sinapayen, Gaëtan Hadjeres - are approaching AI from different angles. In this session each of us will introduce our recent work, while discussing the Future of AI based on some key questions from our different backgrounds, experiences.