Robots and AI Artifacts in Plural Perspective(s) of Japan and the West: The Cultural–Ethical Traditions Behind People’s Views on Robots and AI Artifacts in the Information Era

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the meanings of robots and AI artifacts in our societies and cultures, in particular the question: ‘How do Japanese people and Western people understand and interpret the phenomena and problems happening around them such as human–robot interaction, the encounter with AI, especially regarding plurality of meanings and wholeness of life experience in the information era?’ This is a kind of topic of information ethics or IIE (intercultural information ethics) in a broad sense. We focus our attention on world views in the informatized environments by examining the related views and theories as well as our own empirical research. In addition to these points, we will compare Japanese survey data with data from other cultural–social traditions and we will examine how the Japanese ways of seeing matters and their emphasis on the matters in process of awareness can be considered to have potentially universal connotations.