＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
I previously wrote an article titled “Bhutan: The Happiest Country in the World,” and recently, it was reported that Hitachi has developed “Happiness Technology,” which uses AI technology to measure happiness levels, and that it has received many orders from companies looking to use it in organizational management.
1. Hitachi Establishes Subsidiary to Commercialize Happiness Measurement Technology
Hitachi will establish a new company, “Happiness Planet,” on July 20, 2020, to commercialize its proprietary “happiness measurement technology.” The company will initially focus on organizational management support.
This “happiness measurement technology” is “a technology that analyzes the happiness levels of people and organizations from physical behavior and biochemical phenomena.”
It has been discovered that there are universal characteristics in people’s unconscious physical movement patterns that strongly correlate with happiness.
The major achievement is that happiness levels can now be measured and quantified as “happiness levels” and visualized numerically.
2. Happiness levels cannot be uniformly defined
However, I believe that “happiness” varies depending on each individual’s way of thinking and feeling, and cannot be defined in a uniform way. I think there is “economic happiness,” “spiritual happiness,” “political happiness,” and “religious happiness.”
Bhutan, which was once said to have the “happiest people in the world,” adopted a unique indicator called GNH (Gross National Happiness) rather than GDP (Gross National Product), and aimed to maximize it. In other words, it values ”spiritual wealth, not economic prosperity.”
“Happiness is not the happiness that comes from being wealthy, but the happiness of being able to live an ordinary life,” meaning “the security of having three meals a day, a place to sleep, and clothes to wear. That alone makes you feel satisfied and happy.”
3. Don’t rely too much on AI
AI (artificial intelligence) is now beginning to go beyond the realm of computer science and be fully utilized in the real world, particularly on the front lines of business.
It is true that an increasing number of companies are using AI as a core component of organizational management, such as improving corporate competitiveness and reforming work styles.
However, while the “singularity” in which AI surpasses human intelligence feels more familiar these days, with things like self-driving cars, “smart cities” and “super cities,” unmanned weapons, AI painting, and computer shogi players, I strongly believe that it is ultimately humans who utilize and control AI.
A society in which AI runs wild is like letting a wild animal run free; just imagining it is terrifying.
The idea that “AI can do anything” is an overconfidence in AI, while the idea that “we’ll have AI do everything” will only lead to a decline in human ability and sensibilities. We must be careful not to place too much trust in AI.