[neptunespear]

> Who's open-sourced their driverless car tech - anyone with wheels on the ground and a car you can buy? Some advanced mechatronics will be required to fill a lot of voids in the manual labour space. Whose battery tech and engineering prowess will we be using in these vehicles and machines?

Ah, but that's on the hardware side. Japan is excellent at hardware, its education system spits out lots of factory workers. But I have a hunch that AI and automation, in the future, will emphasizing hardware a bit less (since China/Taiwan/Korea has gotten so good at efficient manufacturing), and refocus towards software--that may be where the growth will be. Since you mentioned Tesla Motors, I will note that they hire a lot of software engineers, and it's not a 100% proprietary locked-down atmosphere on the software side; open source collaboration is encouraged. Tesla even open sourced some of their patents, though I will admit I think Elon Musk's attitude towards open source software can be a bit duplicitous.

> That should be praise, no? I mean, aspects of sexism and odd views about social hierarchy can go in the trash, but their productivity is still very good.

Haha...accidentally several words there. I've fixed it.

[icanhackit]

> Ah, but that's on the hardware side. Japan is excellent at hardware [...] I have a hunch that AI and automation, in the future, will emphasizing hardware a bit less [...] it's not a 100% proprietary locked-down atmosphere on the software side; open source collaboration is encouraged

What you're saying doesn't make economic sense to me: won't open-sourcing the AI and software components commoditize those things, leaving the hardware components like robotics, vehicles and associated hardware like sensors to be the bit that makes the money? Similar to how operating systems are now given away for free with computers and phones?

In which case doesn't Japan win?

[neptunespear]

This would be true if Japanese companies were eager to embrace the open software revolution. However, even as companies in the U.S. and Europe democratize AI, Japanese companies have stubbornly plodded along with closed-off, proprietary standards just like in the 70s and 80s. Sharp, Toshiba, Hitachi, Sony, KDDI, and so on. There needs to be a cultural shift.