From Introduction:

At a conference of the Pontifical Academy for Life in March 2019, Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Robotics Laboratory at the University of Osaka, predicted that in 10,000 years humans would no longer be beings of flesh and blood, becoming indistinguishable from AI-gifted robots. We would thus come close to immortality. As soon as 10.000 years from now? Well, you don’t have to take the language of self-marketing literally.

Ishiguro further explained the need of developing systems that cooperate with humans with Japan’s current demographic development. In fifty years, there would only be half as many Japanese as today. There is not enough immigration, because, as he put it, “foreigners can hardly survive in Japan, Japanese culture being what it is.”

While Japan’s population will not have shrunk by half in fifty years, it is true that demographic change has driven robot technology forward. Since the 1990s, Japan’s working population has been declining and demographic ageing is advancing rapidly.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Japanese government responded to the labour shortage in the manufacturing sector by promoting the construction and use of industrial robots. To the scarcity of nursing staff caused by social ageing and population decline since the early 2000s, it reacted in similar fashion. In both cases the guideline was, “no immigration!” Somewhat maliciously one could say that Japan’s advanced position in care robotics results from a combination of enthusiasm for technology and xenophobia. Those who do not want to admit this emphasize another aspect of Japanese culture, animism.