Country known for historically being resistant to rapid technological change is resisting newest technological change trends.
How surprising.
Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the "human touch," especially when it comes to service, so I can see how companies aren't jumping on to the hype. We're also pretty slow to adopt change.
Oh and maybe the shit exchange rate makes it expensive to use the service as everything is pretty much foreign tech.
This statement is in complete contradiction to the prevalence of vending machines for everything. Methinks you are romanticizing a culture you don’t live in by only seeing the positives you like.
Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the "human touch," especially when it comes to service
Aren't they the ones that first came up with robot servers in restaurants? Or maybe that was South Korea?
It might actually be China. All the robots I see here are the one with the cat face and I'm pretty sure that's where they come from. We don have remote control robot cafes where people with physical/mental disabilities to serve you using avatar bots which is cool!
Japan also did that, but it mostly just for the uniqueness of the robot, not for replacing workforce.
Nah, you wouldnt see 24/7 restaurants like ガスト using them; similar to the conveyors at sushiro, it enables the company to run a 30 table restaurant with like 3 people.
Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the “human touch,” especially when it comes to service, so I can see how companies aren’t jumping on to the hype. We’re also pretty slow to adopt change.
And that's pretty cool, seems like a culture best suited for modern challenges.
I've heard\read there are many racist, paternalist, hierarchical and collectivist traits, but at the same time Japan apparently hasn't hit those honeypots most of the humanity has.
ugh. "collectivist" is a word coined by western chauvinists. that's not a real dichotomy. your fucking Abrahamic countries are far more collectivist than us soulless confucianists
Weird how you say collectivist like it's a bad thing
I mean, one look at Japanese work culture should be all demonstration you need for that.
I’ve heard\read there are many racist, paternalist, hierarchical and collectivist traits,
We definitely have all that!
Also, I found it interesting that someone mentioned how you used "collectivist" as a negative feature of Japanese culture. While it certainly could be, it's actually nice to see when people are genuinely wanting to help each other. The problem is our hierarchical culture where some shitbag on top takes advantage of our collectivist mindset for their own gains.
*Everyone else is working unpaid overtime, why can't you?! *Almost nobody being worked overtime is going to say that. Workers will take it for the good of the imaginary "team" because some manager convinced them it's the right thing to do. Luckily, probably thanks to my Canadian upbringing, I've always been able to say no to ridiculous shit like this. That, and I work for myself, so the only ones who boss me around are my wife and kids.
Edit: Whoops, maybe collectivism isn't the right word for what I found to be positive after reading your other comment. Sorry, but I hope you got my point.
Well, yes, I got your point and also
We definitely have all that!
TBH sometimes it's better to have all that explicitly than implicitly and deny it, like most western societies do, because, well, a human society can't morally raise above the human limitations.
I take issue with this article using the language "lagging behind in the use of generative AI". That language seems to imply there is something wrong in this behaviour.
Good for them.
Japan Not Entirely Stupid Fucking Morons
ftfy
Japan has always been behind most of the world in software advancements. They built their reputation on hardware, but even there they’re significantly lagging.
It was weird watching the divergent development of cell phones in Japan vs the US. The US cell phone industry went all in on software advancements. Japan had phones with all of these weird attachable hardware modules. I remember Japanese cell phones looking like an old gameboy with every attachment accessory on it.
Not that surprising considering Japanese government only retired floppy disks in 2024 and fax machines are still in widespread use there.
Japan has been living in the year 2000 since the 80s.
They could have AI on a floppy that faxes generated images.
Use it for what? Generating a bunch of nonsense text that others have to waste time reading? Generating shitty images with fucked up hands and garbled text to use in stupid ads for worthless trash?
This is a "competitive advantage" not worth pursuing. Most AI products/services lose money and even if they didn't, they're creatively bankrupt as a whole and shouldn't be admired for squeezing money with lower quality.
It's a creative country. They don't need a slopbot to make substandard garbage for them.
Like I did not already like the way that country does things enough.
Yeah, their work-the-workers-literally-to-death culture is top notch.
That, and doing all they can to eliminate romance in their population. I wouldn't be surprised if they had the highest incel rate per capita in the world.
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