Science and technology have a long history of profoundly affecting society through impacts on how international politics work and how humans live their everyday lives. In recent years, the threat of nuclear proliferation and disputes over intellectual property rights have emerged as two of the most contentious issues in international politics.
Technological capabilities are one of the key factors on which each country's national strength is built, and, therefore, the prevailing level of technology is a matter of vital importance to every major country, in wartime and peacetime alike. At individual and social levels, meanwhile, new technologies not only alter the structures of society and organizations but also confront us with new ethical and legal problems.
In the ongoing race for global technological supremacy, it is a common strategy to try to reconcile two conflicting needs -- the need to flaunt the superb appearance and usability of each product and the need to conceal its internal mechanism -- to remain a preeminent market player as long as possible. International competition has become so fierce that a "technology cold war" is now taking place.
In fact, researchers and journalists around the world are closely following the technology rivalry between the United States and China to see which is and will be technologically superior.
MIT Technology Review, a U.S. magazine providing lucidly written science and technology articles for a non-expert audience, recently ran a feature titled "China Rules," looking into the actual levels of Chinese science and technology. Such levels vary from sector to sector, of course, but, according to the feature, China excels in industrializing technological achievements and expanding the market for them. It wrote, "China boasts nine of the world's 20 largest tech companies." Nevertheless, it added, the United States retains an unshakable lead over China in terms of fundamental science and technology power.
For example, the 2017 list of biggest filers of patents under the Patent Cooperation Treaty showed that China overtook Japan and closed in on the longtime leader, the United States. But MIT Technology Review said, "Many domestic Chinese patents are so-called junk patents that are not renewed after their fifth year." In a related development, China retained second position in the 2018 list of country-by-country international patent applications released on March 19 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a self-funding U.N. agency. WIPO commented that "[China] is expected to surpass the United States within the next two years on current trends."
Numbers of science and technology papers published in English-language international journals are often employed for quantitative country-by-country comparison of the state of science and technology development. Citing such a tally for the 2007-17 period compiled by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), the U.S. magazine said, "Mainland [China] authors are second only to those from U.S. institutions."
However, data released by ISTIC showed that in terms of average citations per paper, China was still behind Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States and about a dozen other countries, including Britain, Germany, France, Canada and Japan. So it can be said that what is now threatening the United States economically is not China's prevailing level of science and technology per se but its ability to industrialize and market technological breakthroughs.
Much emphasis on 'hard' side
When we talk about technology, there are various stages: discovering scientific laws or principles, devising laboratory equipment, evaluating the profit potential of new technological applications, estimating the potential costs of related investment plans and fostering production specialists needed for adopting new technologies. In other words, technological breakthroughs and patents do not automatically lead to increased productivity. In reality, productivity improves, depending on the upgrading of "soft" systems, centering on human resource development. As such, it does not make much sense to attach lopsided importance to "hard" aspects of technology.
At the level of everyday life, too, hard aspects of technology seem to be excessively emphasized. There is no shortage of imagination-stimulating news about advancements in technology, telling us how artificial intelligence is likely to change occupational categories and the way we will work or how "air vehicles" may help solve traffic congestion. Many everyday difficulties, such as those in nursing care, are quite likely to be eased. However, because there are still too many unknown factors about how technology will actually change the way we will work in the future, it is hard to make a well-substantiated prediction about such a difficult question.
Even when society is kept updated on new technological developments, it tends to pay little attention to one important theme -- how to best cope with "soft" problems always arising alongside the spread of new technologies. When a new technology is developed and industrialized, its spread in society invariably causes new ethical and legal problems.
In some fields, such as life science, experts and knowledgeable people usually keep a close eye on new research and development efforts in laboratories and occasionally make comments questioning the advisability of all or part of certain projects. But society usually pays little attention to ethical and legal problems that new technologies for general public use may eventually cause in our daily lives. It must not treat such problems lightly. One of the latest cases in point is a set of problems unavoidably associated with the forthcoming proliferation of autonomous driving vehicles.
The Cabinet decided on March 8 to revise the Road Traffic Law and the Road Trucking Vehicle Law to allow self-driving vehicles on public roads under certain conditions from around the summer of 2020. The revision aims to deal with so-called Level-3 automated driving, meaning that a human driver is present but need not be in control for safe operation of the vehicle in a normal driving environment, although they must take immediate control in emergencies or safety-critical situations.
However, the law revision does not cover Level-4 (near-fully autonomous) vehicles whose operation is still limited to specific driving scenarios as well as Level-5 driverless vehicles that apply a fully autonomous system to ensure safe operation in every driving scenario, requiring no occupant intervention during an entire trip.
The proposed revision maintains the current legal prohibition on sleeping and drinking alcohol, but does allow drivers to talk on their smartphones or mobile phones and watch car-mounted TVs. It also refers to some activities, such as eating lunch and working on personal computers, that are not subject to outright prohibition but may make drivers liable for violation of safe driving practices in the event of accidents. The government has thus balanced accommodating consumers' desires to do as many things as possible while behind the wheel and the obligation of safe driving.
Ethical sense won't change
It should be noted, however, that the current stage of technological development is surprisingly far ahead of what the government has done. The world's leading automakers in Japan, Germany and the United States seem to be fiercely competing with a view to developing Level-4 autonomous vehicles in the not distant future and Level-5 ones later.
Even when fully self-driving vehicles finally become available, society is not likely to be entirely free from traffic accidents. Who should be considered as the "driver" to be held accountable for a traffic accident? The occupant or occupants? The automaker? Or, the self-driving software developer?
But the real problem with autonomous vehicles lies far deeper. Every autonomous vehicle must be equipped with a system programmed to save people's lives and ensure their safety in a fatal mishap. Is the vehicle's first priority the protection of the occupants or that of nearby pedestrians? This is a really difficult question to answer in the area of utilitarianism, an ethical theory that seeks the best action by determining which one maximizes utility. It is true that there is no definitely correct answer because it finally depends on each individual's choice of values.
Technology continues to cause society to profoundly change, but people's moral sentiments will remain almost unchanged. Even when society ushers in the arrival of "air vehicles," it is hard to expect people's moral sentiments and ethical senses to change. Without taking people's moral and ethical ways of thinking into due consideration as a basis for revising the relevant laws, it can be hardly said that genuine benefits of a new technology have been brought to society.
In general, we human beings have a tendency to yearn for a world where no human judgment or other input is necessary. Such a desire is not a phenomenon limited to modern society. Even long ago, studies of "perpetual motion," which would require no human input of energy, were a delusive pursuit of invention.
In any case, we cannot escape the legal problems arising from a situation in which we leave a decision to a mechanical system. This means that society should give more importance to discussing the ethical aspects of the use of new technologies. Moreover, society should not remain trapped by thinking based on "technological determinism," the notion that technology alone shapes the ways international politics and people work. Instead of focusing too much on technological innovation, it is imperative for society to take advantage of new technologies by keeping balance between a variety of laws pertaining to the use of technology and the innovation of hard aspects of technology.
Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun
Inoki is a professor emeritus at Osaka University, where he also served as dean of the economics department. Until recently, he was a special professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. Prior to that, he served as director general of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies from 2008 to 2012.
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