Anfini's Hashimoto tells Meiji students: AI shifts consultants to human-only value

Anfini's lecture traced how corporate demand for consulting has shifted over time — from 1960s business strategy to 1990s process reform and ERP adoption, 2010s data analysis, and 2020s AI strategy — and placed today's AI wave inside that longer sequence rather than as a break from it. The examples Hashimoto used, such as invoice-to-voucher entry, management data analysis, and forecasting how exchange-rate moves affect earnings, are practical tasks where AI can be applied, and the presentation framed AI adoption as a step toward better management decisions rather than cost-cutting alone.

The setting mattered as much as the content. The class belongs to Professor Yoichi Hayashi, who has been listed in Stanford University and Elsevier's World's Top 2% Scientists in the artificial intelligence field for five consecutive years since 2021, in both career and single-year categories. Speaking to students learning AI research at the front line, Anfini presented its view that people remain the starting point of all value, and said it will keep working with universities on lectures and student exchanges.