In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/05/japan-is-proving-experimental-physical-ai-is-ready-for-the-real-world/

by rbanffy • 4 months ago

200 222 4 months ago

techcrunch.com

TiaMane• 4 months ago

Robot war will be cinematic, will probably safe lives

paulryanrogers• 4 months ago

That assumes those in power agree that only robots may be harmed.

iknowSFR• 4 months ago

The robot vote is a critical and quickly growing minority group since Wall-E v Sanders determined that all sentient robots were to be treated as citizens. Immediately after, Citizens United was rendered useless and large corporations moved their investments from campaign finance to literal voting machines.

Simulacra• 4 months ago

The article seems to say that it's not jobs nobody wants, but rather a labor shortage from an aging population. Japan just seems to be running out of people for its labor market.

wnevets• 4 months ago

but rather a labor shortage from an aging population.

combined with ridiculous cost of living, terrible work/life balance and incredibly xenophobic immigration policies.

mc33012• 4 months ago

Ridiculous cost of living in Japan? What do you mean by that?

fercircularbuf• 4 months ago

Japan has a very low cost of living. Work/life balance, however, is not good. And neither is the increasingly hostile immigration policies.

functional_dev• 4 months ago

100%

There is genuine demand for physical AI in Japan, there are not enough humans to hire.

I bet, EU will start long debates wether to automate or not :) Japan already skipped that part

maerF0x04• 4 months ago

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today.

A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training.

(Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unemployment rate, i'm talking about labor non-participation rate as a measure of people who could be enticed into the workforce with a living wage)

epolanski3• 4 months ago

18% is one of the.lowest rates on the planet. 4th in fact.

This includes early retirees, full time students, home makers and people unable to work for health related reasons.

maerF0x04• 4 months ago

It's still 10s of millions of people who could be given a job (and some hope and purpose too btw)

Edit: btw I agree there's more to life than work. But when you're unemployed and hoping for work, competing against robots and LLMs is quite crushing.

makeitdouble• 4 months ago

Japan's employment rate is hard to compare, in that many of these job just wouldn't be seen as real jobs in any other country ("bullshit job"), and it's compound by half of the population being over 50. A high employment among the elderly could just be masking the harsher truth when that upper half passes away.

chaostheory• 4 months ago

1. There is only so much you can pay the people doing the kind of work like cleaning the Shinkansens or manning the 7-11's because it affects customer costs. i.e. There's a point where you increase the salary of 7-11 workers that it causes a $2 fried chicken snack to inflate to $10 that customers will refuse to buy

2. Even if there was magically enough money and time to retrain people, they would still be short of workers.

seanmcdirmid5• 4 months ago

Different from the USA, 7-11 in Japan and China are mainly self checkout at least, so they can technically run a store with less people since they don’t have to man cash registers to get people checked out.

ggm• 4 months ago

This is a linkage in theory but in practice it's an indirect linkage and the 7-11 owner does not have a handbook dictating how prices rise or fall relating to labour costs.

As evidenced by the non arrival of across the board 10% rises in meal costs when tipping is banned.

TL;DR cost and price linkage is not amenable to simplistic claims about the impact on pricing.

cco• 4 months ago

Out of curiosity, what percentage of a fried chicken snack's final cost do you think is labor from that 7-11 worker?

Hikikomori• 4 months ago

We manage it in Sweden, even with þ weeks of vacation. Regular people including workers can still eat there.

alephnerd6• 4 months ago

No one wants to clean s#it, especially in a country with as broad a social welfare net as Japan.

Instead, in Japan you can get someone from Vietnam, China, or Thailand to do that for a couple dollars a day with Gulf style guestworker rules.

Additionally, Asian societies don't have the same Luddite aversion to automation [0] that seems to have taken over Western mindshare as can be seen on HN.

They don't want Westerners nor are they opposed to Dirigiste style industrial policies that help build a public-private social safety net by commercializing and deploying automation.

Who do you think SoftBank and MUFG's largest LP's are lol.

Edit: can't reply

I'd highly recommend watching Perfect Day by Wim Wenders. It's a really sweet film

It is! But for every Hirayama there are dozens of ASEAN and Chinese migrant workers doing menial work as part of the JETRO Trainee guest worker program.

NYC sanitation dept...

Sanitation Engineers aren't janitors.

Janitors, fish cleaners, farmworkers, bricklayers, service staff, and other low and unskilled work is what is being supplemented by foreign workers and depending on the job by automation.

So your argument might hold for other countries, but not for Japan. Cleaning is a pretty honorable thing to do there

What's with this kind of orientalism?!?

Japan's Labor Ministry literally has a strategy around hiring foreigners for cleaning and janitorial services [1] due to persistent labor shortages.

And if we want to go that route of shallow orientalist sterotypes, Japan is also a society where whether you or not you attended a Teidai/Sokei/Hitotsubashi/TokyoTech/Ivy/Stanford, whether you have a Government or big corporate job, and whether you will be able to afford a house and have kids by 35 matters.

There's a reason Japan's birth rate crisis is overwhelmingly impacting the lower tier of Japanese society [2].

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-aro...

[1] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/11130500/001567071.pdf

[2] https://news.yahoo.co.jp/expert/articles/11d033af448e404c3f5...

wileydragonfly• 4 months ago

You’re allowed to type shit. We’re all adults here.

Buttons840• 4 months ago

I clean shit for free often.

I wouldn't like doing it past the point of exhaustion for low wages and with poor treatment though.

jonah• 4 months ago

I'd highly recommend watching Perfect Day by Wim Wenders. It's a really sweet film.

"Hirayama cleans public toilets in Tokyo, lives his life in simplicity and daily tranquility. Some encounters also lead him to reflect on himself." -- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27503384/

unscaled• 4 months ago

Unlike many other developed countries, foreign employees working in cleaning and maintenance are still a minority. This is gradually changing, but I believe the main issue is that young people are completely uninterested in this kind of work. Most people working in these industries in Japan are old rather than foreign. The average is probably over 50+, and there are quite a few people working past retirement.

jjmarr• 4 months ago

There's a subreddit for the NYC sanitation dept because it's so competitive to get into.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DSNY/comments/1rwayil/what_was_the_...

People will clean garbage and shit for a DB pension, stability, not sitting at a desk, and avoiding corporate politics.

All of these things are easier to give to sanitation workers because human waste is a recession-proof good and it's less affected by boom-bust. Many people want these jobs.

If you're a tech worker that likes a clean office and new technology this is boring.

But I'm sure there's a sanitation worker going on a similar rant about how terrible the tech industry is.

deepsun2• 4 months ago

Japan is very different than most cultures in cleaning after yourself. It's very ingrained in their psyche, e.g. school students are trained to clean their classrooms in organized way.

So your argument might hold for other countries, but not for Japan. Cleaning is a pretty honorable thing to do there (and it's super-clean as people trash way less).

wilg4• 4 months ago

In case you think 18% is Japan's unemployment rate: it's not. Japan's unemployment rate is 2.5%.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?location...

This is basically the best in the world.

https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/statistical-releases/2...

Not sure what rate OP is citing, but it's not the one I'd use to draw OP's conclusion. You don't wanna YOLO understanding how employment rates are calculated.

jmalicki• 4 months ago

You don't wanna YOLO understanding how employment rates are calculated.

You're way better off YOLO'ing reading the documentation about how they are calculated than listening to the myriad pundits deliberately trying to mislead people and drive conspiracy theories.

This is all documented on the websites of the various statistical agencies, and you can just read their docs.

maerF0x04• 4 months ago

Correct. I was using labor participation rates. As a society gets depressed and has a hard time people stop trying (ie they no longer count as unemployed, which doesnt count the people who are no longer trying to get a job).

Similar to how as police systems fail, people stop reporting things assuming nothing meaningful will happen anyways. And then there's less reports of crime, so magically "crime is down" -- high fives to the police system... (/s)

youre-wrong3• 4 months ago

Even tho you added an edit. You’re still wrong. Garbage collection is typically a high paying job because no one wants to do it. But people still consider it “below” them and don’t want to do it even when there’s a high unemployment rate.

beeflet3• 4 months ago

okay, so the lack of robots/supply increases garbage collector wages, which broadly results in wealth distribution vs robots.

thfuran• 4 months ago

I guarantee you that a lot more people would be willing to put up with it for $10 million a year.

AngryData4• 4 months ago

I don't know if I would call it high pay anywhere ive lived. It is okay pay around me right now in a less prosperous area of the country for not requiring tools or previous skills. But the main thing going for it around here is stability of hours, a decent amount of holidays off, and you don't have to destroy your body.

cryzinger• 4 months ago

This is over 20 years old, and I'm sure doesn't hold true in all areas, but at least at one point there was high demand to be a "san man" ("san" as in "sanitation") in NYC:

It's a coveted job to be a New York City san man. When they last gave the qualifying test, 30,000 people took it. The General waited five years after passing the exam before a job came open, which is typical. And though the work is grueling, the pay-- if you're actually on a truck-- starts at $40,000 and can go to $60 after just five years. [note: this is in 2003 dollars!] A good winter, meaning one with lots of overtime for clearing snow-- they clear snow, too-- can make for a $90,000 year for a senior guy.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/249/garbage

These guys are/were unionized, which certainly helps.

Loughla• 4 months ago

Garbage collectors where I live used to make $30-$35/hr starting wage. It was a good job and they always had applicants.

Now they have the trucks that dump the bins without getting out of the truck. The driver's make $18/hr.

stevenwoo2• 4 months ago

For manual labor I thought the guys I know who do garbage pickup have a great job - their hours are shifted so they work from 4am to noon so they have plenty of time for hobbies and family outside of that. All the time sitting and driving the truck is hard though they rarely have to handle anything manually with standardized bins and hydraulic lifts.

surajrmal• 4 months ago

Does that include stay at home parents?

xelxebar• 4 months ago

A quick google suggests ~18%

FWIW, this figure looks to be the fraction of 20–69 year olds in the entire population who are unemployed[0]. Referencing the official definitions[1], the standard unemployment figure of 2.6 (as of 2026-02) narrows that denominator to people who are receiving wages or actively looking for work.

which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training.

From the above, 18% seems like the wrong number to look at. Heck, why not quote 38.1%, since it captures everyone who can legally work (including 15 and 90 year olds)?

IMO, the base population we want to look at is people who actually want a job, which is captured by various Labor Underutilization (LU) metrics. These all hover around 2.5–6.0% according to public records[2], and are also defined in the official docs[1].

[0] https://www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/sokuhou/tsuki/pdf/gaiyou....

[1] https://www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/pdf/hndbk5_2.pdf

[2]:file:///var/folders/96/k0p95wxn7sg5_xjnv5n233bc0000gn/T/gaiyou-1.pdf

j-bos• 4 months ago

It seems to be human nature to chase after easy to understand solutions rather than addressing ifficult bottlenecks and friction. Doctors are a great example. In order to be a doctor, you have to study for 12 years. But four of those years involve studying generally unrelated topics like any other college degree despite medicine effectively being a trade. Then on top of that, you have the limited spaces for residents anyway, so more great med students still != more doctors. And then on top of that you have the issue that teaching hospitals are usually split apart from regular hospitals and A med student who ends up at a particular teaching hospital basically ends up locked in until their residency finishes leaving them vulnerable to even more pressure.

renewiltord2• 4 months ago

That’s a North American quirk.

autoexec• 4 months ago

But four of those years involve studying generally unrelated topics like any other college degree despite medicine effectively being a trade.

There's a lot of value in knowing about more than just one thing. Anyone leaving their university with a degree should have at least some exposure to topics outside of the field they want to work in. People are more than just their jobs, having a well rounded education is useful, and matters outside of the field of medicine still have real impacts on the lives of doctors.

I'd certainly feel better about going to a doctor who has a reasonable baseline understanding of the rest of the world outside of his work. You could argue that people looking to become doctors should able to avoid some percentage of the other classes they're forced to take, but doctors can often pick up some relevant credits while still fulfilling those requirements too.

retinaros• 4 months ago

yes. this is correct. but that is not how the market works unfortunately or else we would have 0% unemployment. market works in a way that if no one in the country wants to do the job for this wage then you import people from poorer countries that will be able to send money to their family even on a shitty wage.

Robots are the other solution and a much easier one for a society. you don't need to build the structure to welcome mass immigration from poorer countries and all the things you'd need to solve when bringing people from different - often less tolerant / more restrictive - cultures.

mamami• 4 months ago

Meanwhile in the US they're replacing artists, writers, and teachers

jfengel2• 4 months ago

Jobs everyone thinks are easy and nobody likes the people who do it.

Ancalagon2• 4 months ago

Why would people not like artists?

TurdF3rguson6• 4 months ago

I agree with the teachers one. Having one lady in charge of educational instruction for that many kids will be looked back upon as barbarism.

gentoo• 4 months ago

So the solution is to have less ladies in charge? Who's going to wipe snot off the kids' noses, pull legos out of their mouths, and tell them not to hit each other?

FridgeSeal• 4 months ago

The solution is more teachers, smaller class sizes and not underpaying and abusing teachers to function as nanny’s also charged with raising your children.

This isn’t exactly a mystery problem, we’ve understood clearly how to educate humans well for quite a while. It’s just that doing it properly is “eXpEnSiVe” as if the alternative, isn’t quietly orders of magnitude worse, and more costly.

akudha• 4 months ago

I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

From: https://x.com/AuthorJMac/status/1773679197631701238

As a species, we need to evaluate our attitudes to work. The quote above resonates at some level, but maybe there are some people who enjoy doing dishes and laundry, who knows.

Most people are just surviving. It is a constant battle between slaving away in jobs (and have healthcare tied to our jobs) we don't like and rest of our lives, including relationships, hobbies, even health. Most people do not have the time or energy to think about anything else other than just getting through the day.

TurdF3rguson6• 4 months ago

The funny thing is that dishes and laundry are already automated and people are still complaining about them.

Do we need a humaniform robot to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer? Maybe we just need smarter appliances.

nicbou• 4 months ago

It's also killing websites. It's an extinction event for the open internet.

eucryphia• 4 months ago

The job no one wants?

Grunting out 2.6 babies before you’re 35.

Who’s paying for your nursing home? Tax the robot’s income? Will your demographic replacements vote for that?

alephnerd6• 4 months ago

Who’s paying for your nursing home

Japanese financial institutions massive capital positions across Asia, the US, and Europe which tend to be public-private ventures.

Tax the robot’s income

Pretty much, in the sense that corporations and the Japanese government have spent decades working together to build a sovereign wealth model comparable to Singapore and the UAE's.

robotnikman• 4 months ago

This is something that really needs to be done in the states imo.

IIRC we don't have a sovereign wealth fund, but we should in order to provide a social safety net for our citizens, especially with all the uncertainties regarding the future right now.

areoform2• 4 months ago

    > Grunting out 2.6 babies before you’re 35.

* destroying your body, stripping your bones, getting diabetes and temporarily (or permanently) disabling yourself with issues no healthcare provider will take seriously for decades to come for 2.6 babies in your youth.

–––

Someone called this a "belief."

There's a 10% to 4% probability that the average teenage girl will die from childbirth, given the cumulative risk of pregnancies in nations without modern medicine.

That's the default state of the human condition. Maternal mortality is frequent and 1 in 25 to 1 in 10 for women without modern medical interventions.

see: The probability that a 15 year old girl eventually dies from a pregnancy-related cause, assuming constant levels of maternal mortality and number of births per woman. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lifetime-risk-of-maternal...

There's a reason why the more women become aware of the risks and downsides of pregnancy – the less likely they are to go through with it. Even when indoctrinated from the start. The only sane solution in an otherwise insane world is technological, external gestation / exowombs.

chromacity• 4 months ago

Indeed. Gotta keep that body in a tip-top shape so that we can pull off all-nighters at some dude's AI startup while eating pizza and pretzels.

dumbmrblah• 4 months ago

Lol my wife is in better shape now after kids than when she was pregnant, and she was in amazing shape before.

For some people having kids crystallizes the importance of health, etc.

ericd4• 4 months ago

This happens, but it's not representative. Interesting belief, it seems like it should be self-extinguishing, the cultures that don't believe this kind of thing will tend to take over over time.

tamimio2• 4 months ago

Nothing will destroy you physically, mentally, and emotionally than grinding 12hrs a day just so you can make someone else’s wealthier.

throwaway290• 4 months ago

off topic. all risks you mention are in developing countries without good medicine. that's not Japan.

imetatroll• 4 months ago

You raise 3rd world risks and act like they apply to Japan. In Japan your very own data shows < 0.01%.

One uncomfortable truth is that being younger is better when it comes to starting a family.

sph3• 4 months ago

I wonder how humanity managed to survive until today having to deal with childbirth.

Such a 2026 tech worker type of comment.

ecshafer• 4 months ago

Pregnancy and birth is a miracle. And the death rate is extremely low in the developed world.

Apreche• 4 months ago

It’s amazing to use technology to save humans from toil. The question is, who owns the robot? Who benefits from the labor it produces?

The techno utopia we imagine is a world where nobody has to work. All our needs are taken care of and we live a life of leisure. But as long as there is ownership of the automated systems, those owners will hoard all the wealth generated by that automation.

Labor expenditures and taxes are the only times the wealthy have to share their wealth with the rest of us. If they succeed in disintermediating labor, and governments fail to tax them, the oligarchs will live a life of unlimited luxury while the rest of us die in poverty.

genxy• 4 months ago

I believe that is the plan.

Ancalagon2• 4 months ago

Viva La revolution

nradov• 4 months ago

Yikes, that's not the utopia I imagine at all. A world where nobody has to work sounds horrific.

perching_aix2• 4 months ago

A world where nobody has to work sounds horrific.

Why?

charcircuit2• 4 months ago

All our needs are taken care of
while the rest of us die in poverty.

These can't be simultaneously true. If all of our needs are taken care of, that is the same thing as unlimited luxury. Someone hoarding wealth is not that important when everyone has everything they want. Society is already being helped by all of the needs they are fulfilling. We don't need to also take their wealth too.

Kbelicius2• 4 months ago

These can't be simultaneously true.

Nobody said that they can.

The techno utopia we imagine is a world where nobody has to work. All our needs are taken care of and we live a life of leisure.

All our needs are taken care of in an imagined techno utopia.

But as long as there is ownership of the automated systems, those owners will hoard all the wealth generated by that automation.

That utopia can not come if there is private ownership of those automated systems.

AngryData4• 4 months ago

Either that or the people in poverty will get angry at the disparity and burn everything to the ground.

7373737373• 4 months ago

If Universal Basic Income was a thing, this would probably happen much faster globally

alephnerd6• 4 months ago

Japan doesn't have UBI, but it's welfare system is extremely expansive as Article 25 of the Constitution guarantees a minimum standard of living through livelihood, housing, education, and medical assistance.

Additonally, Japan has spent decades thinking about this eventuality (at least since the 1970s), which is why Japan worked on the "Flying Geese" paradigm where Japanese public-private ventures would end up become major capital stake holders across Asia, the US, and Europe.

gkanai• 4 months ago

"Flying Geese" paradigm

Can you name any one of these that are successful or prominent? I am not aware of this paradigm.

Kon5ole• 4 months ago

The problem with UBI is not that people would stop working, it's that the value of whatever amount is given as UBI will drop very quickly due to inflation.

UBI is basically the same as saying "everyone should earn above average".

defrost• 4 months ago

This is why the Australian 1907 Harvester Decision didn't merely settle on an amount (42 shillings a week) but also included a needs based indexing (support a wife and three children, to feed, house, and clothe them).

msla• 4 months ago

They're coming for the jobs immigrants would be taking if the Japanese government weren't so xenophobic.

totetsu• 4 months ago

This is explicitly part of the discourse, but I think it means robotics companies continuing to receive government grants while not actually delivering any labor saving technology, and immigration policy being held back. The industries needing labor will not get a suitable solution, the economy will continue to suffer, but the psychology of those around the world who believe in racial order, and correct positions of alleles on geography, will remain soothed.

jazz9k• 4 months ago

Why does Japan need immigrants? Japan is one of the safest countries in the world because of its immigration policies.

perching_aix2• 4 months ago

japan is going to shit because of all the immigrants
japan is better than pussy thanks to it being strict on immigrants

pick whichever convenient

beeflet3• 4 months ago

What is the point of letting in immigrants if they won't have jobs.

canpan2• 4 months ago

I went to a chain Family Restaurant recently here in Japan. The food is brought by a robot for a while now. Recently you get your seat selected at a touchscreen. You can pay at your table's tablet using PayPay. There is still some waiter staff, but it being reduced to the past. The only part that did not change much yet is the kitchen.

I said to myself to stop going, if there is no human staff left. On the other hand, small shops with good atmosphere are thriving.

ashleywr• 4 months ago

Given waiters are not tipped here, I actually quite enjoy the quietness/quickness/streamlined atmosphere of a Jonathan's or Gust that has all that automation. I would not want the kitchen staff to be replaced by robots though, food prep should probably always been overseen by humans. But in general, I like not having to interact with people sometimes.

bryanhogan• 4 months ago

You are probably talking about Cafe Restaurant Gusto (ガスト). A robot bringing me the food improves my experience as I don't have to wait as long, and I can leave whenever I want, just get up and pay, it's more efficient and provides a better experience.

encody• 4 months ago

Gusto, Saizeriya, Jonathan's... Lots of them are at least partly robot-staffed these days. It is a bit inconvenient for me to have to remove the plates from the robot, which usually stops at an awkward location relative to my seat, but that's really nitpicking on my part. Also, they play music and talk, which can get annoyingly loud at times.

bigbadfeline2• 4 months ago

I said to myself to stop going, if there is no human staff left.

Who do you trust more - the robots or the human staff? And I'm asking about America, or maybe, in Japan as foreigner?

This is a complicated issue but it's in no way insignificant. A lot depends on the culture and current political environment - none of these is something that you or any common man can influence.

The bigger question is, if Japan can use plenty of robots to increase productivity while keeping the unemployment rate near the minimum achievable, what's there to argue about? There will be minor inconveniences but from an economic standpoint, there isn't more one could ask for.

samus7• 4 months ago

Who do you trust more - the robots or the human staff? And I'm asking about America, or maybe, in Japan as foreigner?

What do you mean with "trust"? Write down the right order? Or not spit in your food?

01100011• 4 months ago

Japan is in a demographic decline. They need all the robots they can get.

muyuu• 4 months ago

currently most industrialised countries are in a demographic decline, sometimes patched by immigration that will burden their economies long term much more than they will help them

China is a deeper decline than Japan too, which will make their geopolitics volatile

alex435786• 4 months ago

All developed countries are in demographic decline (ex immigration), and need automation/robotics. There's only so many immigrants you can import before you lose your country's identity.

array_key_first2• 4 months ago

There's only so many immigrants you can import before you lose your country's identity.

Is this true? The US has been doing this for over 100 years and it's been fine, I think. I mean, our countries identity has basically become "we're all immigrants" but that's not a new phenomena.

fhn• 4 months ago

just like nobody in the US is qualified to work in tech so companies have to outsource jobs?

xvxvx• 4 months ago

The idea that automation, AI, offshoring, and low-paid migrant workers are filling jobs no one wants is pure evil bullshit. The main goal of business is to generate the most income with the least expense, labor being the most cost for the most part. We're downstream from indentured servitude and literal slavery, and probably one bad event away from going back.

9rx• 4 months ago

The main goal of business is to generate the most income with the least expense

That's the goal of small business. It is the only way to stay afloat and try to grow while allowing the stakeholders enough to survive. Large business starts to generate so much income that it could never possibly spend it all anyway, so minimizing expenses doesn't really matter. What does matter, to the people running the show, is ensuring that they gain social status.

And for that you need visibility and connections. The way you get connections and visibility is to build impressive offices and fill them with notable people. The work might be technically pointless, but it generates a network of friends in high places and that is what provides social status. A trillion dollar business that is one guy in his parents' basement might sound appealing to the average software developer, but not to those who actually run these large companies.

sharadov• 4 months ago

Rather than encouraging immigration they come up with this.

stephc_int132• 4 months ago

I think that many signs are indicating that Japan will re-emerge as a major technology powerhouse in the coming decades. And being confronted early to demographic transformation will end-up being an advantage. On the opposite side I think that immigration is a temporary band-aid that doesn’t solve any of the structural issues.

canpan2• 4 months ago

Can you share some other signs you think may indicate it rising as a powerhouse? Living in Japan, I am interested what others see.

Regarding immigration, Japan is actually making it a lot stricter now. Not sure how that will play out.

stephc_int132• 4 months ago

Miti is basically a second government with real power, finance and expertise, and they appear to bet on the correct things, it should have happened earlier but from what I have seen they are moving faster than EU on the semiconductor and robotics fronts.

mc33012• 4 months ago

I'm also curious why they imagine a future-Japan-tech-powerhouse. I think Japan has a lot of potential for growing and improving as a place to live (especially if they embrace growth, instead thinking tiny-steps will convince women in Japan to magically start having babies[0])

Additionally, all signs do, in fact, point to fewer new immigrants to Japan in the coming decade.

[0](https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260401/p2g/00m/0na/04...)

AngryData4• 4 months ago

I agree immigration is a band-aid, but that doesn't mean it can't be successfully used while planning and managing structural changes long term.

Of course that does make the issue more nuanced and harder to advocate for when we have all seen politicians don't usually push for long term solutions if their band-aid solution will outlast their term of office.

th2o3i4234983• 4 months ago

Other than that loony High-School "Nostradamus", what signs do you see ?

They have some core technologies in some niches, but they lag behind both the US & China in Tech. This is esp. true in Robotics, and their academics/industrialists have massive egos & racial pride from a bygone era to ever be able to bridge this gap with immigration. They even removed the Phd scholarships for people moving to Japanese Universities (which have been falling in competitiveness for decades)!

tamimio2• 4 months ago

Cobotics (robots doing trivial stuff that helps human and assist them rather than “replacing” them) has been a thing for decades, that’s not the issue here, the issue is corporate greed that are using robots or AI as a scapegoat to blame your low wages and/or fire you. If the job market is more regulated, you will those excuses vanishing quickly.

eqvinox• 4 months ago

"Physical AI"?

I must've missed the last terminology update patch…

(I can see what it's trying to say, but… my brain just refuses this one. AI is a concept, which… just, no.)

bryanrasmussen• 4 months ago

the jobs nobody wants is the beta test, production rollout includes jobs that poor people and teenagers want, next major version upgrade jobs that adults with limited educational opportunities want, and so on and so forth.

sph3• 4 months ago

filling the one [job] nobody wants.

Time to share the meme again, sorry to my followers for reusing this joke:

‘I wanted a machine to do the dishes for me so I could concentrate on my art, and what I got was a machine to do the art so now I’m the one doing the dishes’

I’d be much happier with this AI revolution if I got a personal robot chef and house-keeper, while I could keep writing beautiful software. Now I’m looking to pivot into more blue-collar jobs to escape the existential dread, and making software a personal hobby rather than a career.

DonsDiscountGas• 4 months ago

Mechanical dishwashers have existed for awhile. I guess they only do half the job and but we've had them for decades

sph3• 4 months ago

You are not supposed to take ‘doing the dishes’ literally. The other time I posted this, I got the same superficial response. Read between the lines, man.

In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

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