Japan's AI that replaces humans failed; connective AI sticks, says PKSHA Technology's Katsuya Uenoyama

Uenoyama's account is built around a contrast he observed over 14 years of deployments at more than 4,800 companies: AI meant to substitute for a person whole tends to fade, while AI placed between people — taking over the notes, records and minutes around a human interaction — settles in. The JR East JRE POINT call center is his concrete example, where the customer conversation stays with a human operator and the AI writes the record beside them.

The framing he draws from this is that the tasks AI absorbs first are not the human-facing work itself but the layer around it: care workers' nighttime records, sales minutes after a meeting, doctors' notes between consultations. The automation of routine clerical and standard white-collar work still proceeds, in his telling; what he treats as the open question is whether people can adapt to the pace at which the content of the work changes.