EJEA International Conference 2022

The European Japan Experts Association (EJEA) was established in 1995 and launched an annual conference series in 2018 with the first one convened in Stockholm (Sweden), followed by a conference 2019 in Graz (Austria). Due to the pandemic the commemoration of EJEA’s 25th anniversary in 2020 the conference was postponed to 2021, it was hosted by Kagawa University and took place in Japan and online. This conference was mainly sponsored by Toshiba International Foundation.

The conference title “Human-centered Sustainability and Innovation for an AI-assisted Future” opened the floor for presentations and discussions from a broad range of perspectives and aspects. Once again it was found that Europe and Japan share a lot in common but will also have to face different challenges in the future - on a local as well as on a global level.

Therefore, megatrends for 2030 will be the guiding principles for the coming conference in 2022 and some of their keywords are: “demographics”, “rise of the individual”, “enabling technology”, “economic interconnectedness”, “economic power shift”, “climate change” and “energy crisis”, “urbanization”, “global cooperation and peace” etc. These trends will have a significant impact not only on governments, but also on economy, education, research, as well as on societies and citizens all over the world!

Megatrends are very significant, especially in times of current changes. They affect all levels of society and thus influence companies, institutions, and individuals. They are not only a core element of research but also the basis for decisions in business, politics and on a personal level.

Executive Director DFKI Kaiserslautern & Head of Research Department Smart Data & Knowledge Services; Professor at Department of Computer Science and Intelligent Systems at Osaka Metropolitan University

This talk will address the multiple opportunities presented by the use of AI approaches to combine the analysis of satellite imagery and data collected on the ground. In particular, three exemplary areas, namely disaster management, air pollution monitoring, and agricultural yield management, will be discussed to demonstrate the added value of both data sources.

For the first domain, I will show how multimedia data from real-time social media monitoring and spectral data from Earth observation can be tied together to provide deep insight and foresight into disasters. In the second case, I will explain how mapping human settlements in combination with Sentinel 5 data can reveal the impact of air pollution. In the third case, I will discuss some insights into monitoring agricultural processes using sensor data from agricultural machinery. In doing so, I will highlight the potential to combine the relevant findings with approaches to classifying land cover and land use using remote sensing.

Director-General at Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Analysis; Manager Government Affairs & Public Policy, Google Cloud Nordics

During this keynote I will guide you through some important policy documents such as the Swedish and Finnish Nato application and the New Swedish Government Declaration.I will also give you insight into selected parts of the forthcoming regulatory landscape that will regulate digital transformation across Europe. I would also like to share some share empirical evidence from discussions we have with firms regarding their digital transformation journey covering the following areas: 

Understanding and using data: We help customers as they would like to become smarter and make better decisions with a unified data platform. We also help customers reduce complexity and combine unstructured and structured data — wherever it resides — to quickly and easily produce valuable insights.

Establishing an open foundation for growth: Our users get a flexible, secure and open platform that evolves with their organization. Our commitment to multicloud, hybrid cloud, and open source offers organizations the freedom of choice, allowing their developers to build faster and more intuitively.

Creating a collaborative environment: In today’s hybrid work environment we provide the tools users need to transform how people connect, create, and collaborate.

Securing systems and users: As every company rethinks its security posture, we help customers protect their data using the same infrastructure and security services that Google uses for its own operations.

Building a cleaner, more sustainable future: We have been carbon neutral since 2007, and we are working toward being entirely on carbon-free energy by 2030. Today, the workloads we run are matched with 100% renewable energy. We help customers decarbonize their applications and infrastructure with technologies like Carbon Footprint and Active Assist.

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, Head of Human-Centered Engineering & Design

The term Society 5.0 is associated with a smart and sustainable society. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) or Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR / VR) are examples of technologies that could shape our future world of work and leisure.

Unlike a few years ago, technologies today have matured to such an extent that utopias and dystopias of societal technologization could become reality. Of course, the designers of a Society 5.0 intend to improve the world we live in and enhance the quality of our lives. Nevertheless, we must take care that this noble intention becomes reality. This talk aims to emphasize the importance of human-centered approaches in designing a smart society.

Using a Metaverse vision as an example, it will be shown that existing human factors approaches, such as Usability or User experience (UX), are not sufficient to make social contexts with AR / VR human-friendly. Consequently, in this talk the idea of a new research discipline - for which the concept Humability is introduced here for the first time - will be presented. The overarching research question in the field of Humability should be how virtual and augmented worlds and the social spaces within must be designed so that they are harmless or even beneficial to a person's mental health.

First design-oriented research questions for designing metaverses are raised based on major psychological sub-disciplines. The high social relevance of these questions highlights the urgency of establishing Humability as an interdisciplinary applied science.

RIKEN AIP, Center for Advanced Intelligence Project AI Utilization in Society and Legal System

The relation between AI and society has become the critical issue to use AI technologies in the various applications that we human being use to survive in our society. The AI systems being used as an interface of natural persons and information sphere which forces us to think about its ELSI problems. Among these, avatars which start to get focused in the future meta-verse environments even in today’s internet circumstances.

In this talk, we focus on ELSI of avatars especially, autonomous avatars because when one natural person use many avatars on behalf of him/her to enhance his/her informational capacity, avatars need to be autonomous. If we utilize these autonomous avatars on behalf of us, other entities including natural persons or even avatars need to trust our avatars. The main topics of this talk are how to make trust between avatars and other entities, what kinds of problem we have to think about to keep trust relations, and how to cope with them.

Director of Real-time Systems Laboratory, Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University

There is a widespread expectation that digital solutions and in particular the use of AI and machine learning (ML) will be part of the smart societies of the future. In this talk I pose the question whether the reliance on massive deployment of connectivity, software, and ML needs to be coupled with advancing methods for assuring their cybersecurity and safety. In that case, I exemplify a couple of challenges in addressing these issues in autonomous and smart solutions of today. I then go on to give examples, based on current research, where barriers need to be removed to further the ability to reason about the systems we are building, both from the security and safety perspectives.

Cybersecurity and privacy need to be integrated into the systems that build the backbone of the societal needs, namely the critical infrastructures on which all services and products will depend. Prevention of hazards and threats to security/privacy while developing a system is ultimately the best means of reducing future failures. However, what we have learnt from digitalisation so far tells us that we need to anticipate that the complex distributed cyber-physical systems we are building will exhibit behaviours affected by faults, overloads, and attacks. This mindset will encourage also creating methods for detecting deviations from intended “good states” during operation. This will be exemplified by methods for detection as well as prevention of faults and intrusions taken from recent research with my students.

Former Vice-President for International Affairs; Professor of Department of Pharmaco-Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University

Kagawa University (KU) established in 1949 is a middle size national university which is located in Shikoku Island of Japan. KU has had a pivotal role to cooperate with local government and local industries to promote regional strength and solve various weaknesses of the society. Many Industry-Academia-Government collaboration initiatives have been proposed and accomplished both domestically and internationally in the 21st century.

One of them is the tele-medicine project which aims to improve uneven distribution of medical resources in Kagawa Prefecture. There are many depopulated areas in the mountainous zone and islands in Kagawa and residents of those areas have limited supplies and opportunities of various medical and health services. I introduce our project to reduce risks of pregnant women who live in rural areas of Kagawa and its successful international implementation in various developing countries.

I also introduce the novel graduate school named “Graduate School of Science for Creative Emergence” established in 2021. This graduate school is featured by multi-disciplinary curriculum such as art, design and technology, policy of the sustainable development with diversity and inclusiveness, innovation through Industry-Government-Academia collaboration and recurrent and re-skilling education.

Former President of Karolinska Institute; Professor of Physiology; Member of the Science and Technology in Society Forum Kyoto (STS)

The world is facing challenges that affect us all. These include for example the pandemic and its aftermath, the issue of food security and above all the overarching Climate change. Collaboration, not just competition, must motivate progress of science and technology, but also in cultural exchange. Japan and Sweden have for a long time benefited from cooperation in many fields such as politics, business, and science and technology. The pandemic led to an unexpected halt in the personal exchanges between the two countries. Slowly, restrictions are lifted. Students and scientists can again travel and start long duration stays in Japan respectively Sweden. Impression from a recent visit of the Sweden Japan Foundation to Japan will be presented, such as:

• How can exchanges with Japanese companies, universities and NGOs expand after the pandemic and be promoted?
• What are the important trends in Japan, and how can we reestablish contacts and search for opportunities for future exchanges?

The Sweden-Japan Foundation was established in 1971. It organizes seminars, and lectures, and conducts a scholarship program primarily for visits longer than three months in Japan. The focus is on economics, science and technology.

1. Oral Contributions

We ask for oral contributions, that should be no longer than 10 minutes and presented during parallel workshops (see 2. below).

2. Workshops

We welcome your offers to organize and co-chair (Europe and/or Japan) a workshop in the scope of the conference. Each workshop organizer and co-chair is also involved in reviewing submissions of oral contributions in his/her field. Please note that organizing a workshop must be performed by the workshop-applicant. The workshop organizers are supposed to also take individual submissions for oral contributions (see 1) into consideration.

If you want to organize a workshop please let us know as soon as possible!

Following workshop are currently under discussions:

• Prediction of Unexpected, Seldom Positive and Negative Events / Impacts (Dietrich Albert et al.)
• Methods to Stimulate Behavioral Change in Different Cultures / Cultural Contexts
• Support / Assistance for Elderly People by Robots / AI in Japan and Europe (RIKEN)
• EIJS Policy Brief: Human Resource Development Initiatives in Large Japanese Companies (Marie Söderberg et al., tbc)
• How can networking activities intensify current and future European-Japanese initiatives and innovations?
• DeepMind research; relation between brain, AI, and consciousness

3. Posters

Posters focusing on human-centered sustainability and innovation for an AI-assisted future are very welcome, also from a more specific perspective. Submissions are not limited to established academics; we also encourage students and representatives from the industry to submit their posters!

4. Demonstrations

Demonstrations (online) from industry and research institutions dealing with innovative systems (robots, AI-software etc.) are very welcome.

5. Self-Presentation of Smart Cities

Online self-presentations of smart cities are very welcome.

6. Self-Presentation of Smart Companies

Online self-presentations of smart companies are very welcome.