Japanese company replaces oce workers with

arcial intelligence
Insurance rm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with
IBMs Watson Explorer AI

Redundant

not or no
longer needed
or useful

Productivity

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes it will increase producvity by 30% Photograph: Toru
Hanai/REUTERS

how well
something
works

A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an
insurance rm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid o and replaced with
an arcial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders.

Laid off

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes it will increase producvity by 30% and see a return on
its investment in less than two years. The rm said it would save about 140m yen (1m) a year
aer the 200m yen (1.4m) AI system is installed this month. Maintaining it will cost about
15m yen (100k) a year.

a person or
group in whose
name an
insurance
policy is held.

The move is unlikely to be welcomed, however, by 34 employees who will be made redundant
by the end of March.

Maintain

The system is based on IBMs Watson Explorer, which, according to the tech rm, possesses
cognive technology that can think like a human, enabling it to analyse and interpret all of
your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video.

dismiss from
work

Policyholder

cause or
enable
something to
continue.

The technology will be able to read tens of thousands of medical cercates and factor in the
length of hospital stays, medical histories and any surgical procedures before calculang
payouts, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.

Payout

a large
payment of
money

While the use of AI will drascally reduce, the me needed to calculate Fukoku Mutuals
payouts which reportedly totaled 132,000 during the current nancial year the sums will
not be paid unl they have been approved by a member of sta, the newspaper said.
Japans shrinking, ageing populaon, coupled with its prowess in robot technology, makes it a
prime tesng ground for AI.
According to a 2015 report by the Nomura Research Instute, nearly half of all jobs in Japan
could be performed by robots by 2035.
Dai-Ichi Life Insurance has already introduced a Watson-based system to assess payments although it has not cut sta numbers - and Japan Post Insurance is interested in introducing a
similar setup, the Mainichi said.
AI could soon be playing a role in the countrys polics. Next month, the economy, trade and
industry ministry will introduce AI on a trial basis to help civil servants dra answers for
ministers during cabinet meengs and parliamentary sessions.
The ministry hopes AI will help reduce the punishingly long hours bureaucrats spend
preparing wrien answers for ministers.
If the experiment is a success, it could be adopted by other government agencies, according
the Jiji news agency.
If, for example a queson is asked about energy-saving policies, the AI system will provide civil
servants with the relevant data and a list of pernent debang points based on past answers
to similar quesons.
The march of Japans AI robots hasnt been enrely glitch-free, however. At the end of last
year, a team of researchers abandoned an aempt to develop a robot intelligent enough to
pass the entrance exam for the presgious Tokyo University.
AI is not good at answering the type of quesons that require an ability to grasp meanings
across a broad spectrum, Noriko Arai, a professor at the Naonal Instute of Informacs, told
Kyodo news agency.

Bureaucrats
an official
in a
government
department

Pertinent

relevant to
something

Prestigious
high class