Japan’s digital minister pushes for AI use, but ChatGPT does not know who he is

Mr Kono Taro has long battled to do away with cumbersome government paperwork and the use of older technologies. PHOTO: REUTERS

TOKYO – ChatGPT failed to correctly identify Japanese Digital Transformation Minister Kono Taro, even as he advocates for more use of artificial intelligence (AI) to help overcome labour shortages caused by a population decline. 

“I asked ChatGPT who Kono Taro is and he came back with the wrong answer,” Mr Kono said in an interview with Bloomberg Television broadcast on Monday. “So you need to be careful.”

Mr Kono asked that his name be written in Japanese style, with surname first. 

He was speaking as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida established a panel to look into the economic potential and risks of AI, seeking to take a lead on the regulation of the technology as the 2023 chair of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies.

The group’s digital ministers agreed in April on an action plan for promoting “trustworthy AI”.

The European Union took a step in May towards more regulation of AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.

“Robots are not a threat to the labour force in Japan” because of the shrinking population, Mr Kono said.

“We are more eager to try new AI technologies,” he added, saying that the government was discussing data set creation with Microsoft Corp and other providers of the technology.

“The minority language data set compared to English is not big, so it could be skewed,” he said. 

SoftBank Group Corp’s mobile unit last week announced that it is joining the global race to develop a version of ChatGPT, following a series of American and Chinese firms. 

Mr Kono was appointed to his current post in 2022.

He has long battled to do away with cumbersome government paperwork and the use of older technologies, like fax machines and floppy disks.

He said he is seeking to pass a Bill as soon as May that would remove such requirements from more than 10,000 laws and regulations after a search through paperwork stretching back for decades.

The government’s bid to issue identity cards for all residents, which streamlines the issuance of local government paperwork, hit a snag recently when card users were mistakenly given residence certificates for unrelated individuals, triggering concerns over privacy. 

Mr Kono said he believed local governments would start running the programme again after thorough checks by Fujitsu Ltd, the developer of the system.

The outspoken Mr Kono, who lost to Mr Kishida in a run-off vote for the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in 2021, often tops media polls on who is the most suitable person to be prime minister. 

Asked how ChatGPT had identified him when he entered a query about himself, Mr Kono said it had called him “prime minister of Japan”. BLOOMBERG

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