International Joint Symposium on the 4th Industrial Revolution

The symposium began with remarks from AIU President Monte Cassim on society’s need for both technical and human expertise while Prof. Tadachika Nakayama highlighted the exciting new J-PEAKS partnership between AIU and Nagaoka University of Technology.

The first keynote address was delivered by Prof. Yoshiyuki Sankai, President and CEO of Cyberdyne, professor at Tsukuba University, and Program Director of the Cabinet Office’s SIP Program. Prof. Sankai discussed one of the main developments of Cyberdyne, HAL(Hybrid Assistive Limb), which empowers those who have lost function in their neuromuscular system to regain the ability to move and/or walk. He also shared the practical challenges of receiving medical approval for these devices around the world while detailing some of Cyberdyne’s newest innovations. One key takeaway for innovators was that, since Prof. Sankai was trying to promote an entirely new type of medical device, he encountered difficulties in regulatory approval in the world, including the establishment of international standards, since there was no related regulation or category at all. Rather than giving up or simply waiting for the government to act, he took an active role in creating the policy that would allow his innovation to move forward.

The second half of the symposium featured several talks from partners at Seoul National University (SNU) and Konkuk University. Prof. Tae Gyun Park delivered the keynote address, giving a historical overview of the three previous industrial revolutions (IRs). In particular, he noted that these were all accompanied  by heightened fears about the future and war outbreaks. He stressed the importance of learning from these IRs in order to better prepare for the fourth IR.

Prof. Hong-Gee Kim spoke next about the future of humanity and technology, continuing on the historical trend. The current IR is unique, he shared, as systems are more interconnected and the boundaries between human and technology are more blurred, i.e., cyborg technology, gene therapy, etc. Similar to the roundtable discussion, he expressed the inherent good and value in work, even when so many tasks can be automated.

Prof. Jin-Ho Park continued with a more technical talk, presenting how AI algorithms can be leveraged in linguistics research. His examples focused on using these tools to date Korean manuscripts, yielding models with greater accuracy and precision than even leading experts. Despite this impressive algorithmic performance, he stressed that domain expertise is still vital to build both accurate and practically useful models.

The event concluded with a presentation from Prof. Hyung-Seok Kim on improving the human experience in the metaverse. One of the questions his research group tackled was: in a metaverse setting, where the walkable area may be tens of kilometers or more, how can the user experience such freedom when their physical space is restricted to several meters? His team overcame this challenge using nudges and visual clues in the metaverse to keep people in smaller physical areas.