In our highly developed digital society, it’s easy to find authentic-seeming answers and evaluations from an online search. But most of these answers and evaluations are not derived from your own experience or thinking. Plus, the world of social media tends to only show the visually appealing, shining and beautiful side of things, and is highly influential. However, we are beginning to focus on establishing our own styles without relying on other people’s values or experiences, and correctly recognizing our own appeal. By valuing the unique characteristics of local areas and regions as well as our actual lived experiences, and noticing and enjoying small, previously overlooked changes, we can better understand our own emotions and senses to achieve emotional wellness.

People have begun speaking up about issues, and countries and corporations have started discussions and initiatives working toward ideals such as understanding diversity and achieving gender equality in society. But we need to form new societal rules in order to create a society where everyone can live in equality and comfort. However, simply adding more choices will not resolve the issues. If we introduce a sudden new balance, distortions are sure to occur somewhere. This is exactly why we must gather opinions from every perspective and hold discussions. Communication incorporating different cultures and backgrounds will propel us forward in encouraging diversity and challenging societal taboos. This trend is indispensable to the sustainable development of our future society.

With AI technology, testing and support technologies in the medical and welfare fields have made tremendous progress. The level of in-home medical care made possible by linking products with AI continues to rapidly advance, and many products using routinely collected data to help discover illnesses at earlier stages are becoming part of our lives. And now, in this age when the concept of Convivial Technology has drawn attention and technology is starting to demonstrate autonomy, it is the right moment to reconsider how to balance living together̶people with people, people with nature, and people with technology. In recent years, the technology factor has become an impossible to see black box. But now we must reconsider each kind of tool available to us and bring awareness to things as appropriate for each situation and function.

The emergence of Chat GPT sent shockwaves around the world. With the introduction of generative AI, various types of automatic generation became possible in dialogue with AI. With possible applications extending far beyond simply assisting with calculations or translations, this technology is expected to contribute to solving a wide array of serious issues such as conservation of the natural environment, protection of cultural properties and emergency disaster assistance. AI is also pushing creativity further and faster. However, this technology can also facilitate misinformation and identity theft when misused, and there have been criticisms on moral grounds. Of course, protecting social morals is important. But people will have to judge and decide whether AI-generated results and information are correct―ultimately making up their own minds without blindly trusting AI-generated determinations or results.