Global Courant 2023-05-15 05:53:00
TOKYO – ChatGPT failed to correctly identify Japan’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Kono Taro, even as he advocates greater use of artificial intelligence to help overcome labor shortages caused by a shrinking population.
“I asked ChatGPT who Kono Taro is and he came back with the wrong answer,” Kono said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Monday. “So you have to be careful,” he added.
Mr. Kono asks that his name be written in Japanese style, last name first.
Mr. Kono was speaking as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida set up a panel to examine the economic potential and risks of AI to lead the way in regulating the technology as chairman of the Group of Seven Wealthy Democracies this year.
The group’s digital ministers agreed in April on an action plan to promote “trustworthy AI”.
Earlier in May, the European Union took a step towards more regulation of AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
“Robots are not a threat to the workforce in Japan,” Kono said due to the shrinking population. “We are eager to try out new AI technologies,” he added, saying the government was discussing dataset creation with Microsoft Corp. and other suppliers of the technology. “The data set for minority languages compared to English is not large, so it may be skewed,” he said.
The mobile division of SoftBank Group Corp. announced last week that it is joining the global race to develop a version of OpenAI Inc.’s ChatGPT, following a string of US and Chinese companies.
Mr. Kono was appointed to his current position last year.
He has long fought to end cumbersome government paperwork and the use of older technologies, such as fax machines and floppy disks.
He is trying to pass a bill as soon as possible this month that would remove such requirements from more than 10,000 laws and regulations after decades of paperwork digging, he said.
The government’s attempt to issue ID cards for all residents, streamlining the issuance of local government paperwork, recently hit a snag when card users were mistakenly issued residence certificates for unrelated individuals, prompting to privacy concerns.
Mr. Kono said he believed local governments would resume the program after thorough checks by Fujitsu Ltd., the developer of the system.
The outspoken Kono, who lost to Kishida in a runoff election for the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in 2021, often tops media polls on who is best suited to become prime minister.
When asked how ChatGPT had identified him when he entered a question about himself, Mr. Kono said it had called him “Prime Minister of Japan”. BLOOMBERG
