Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the recent development of policy relating to AI in healthcare as well as the ethical principles proposed to govern it, based on analysis of key documents and semi-structured interviews with several of the architects of Japan’s AI policies and ethical frameworks.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past decade, the Japanese government has released a series of guidelines and policy documents setting out positions on the ethics and governance of AI, culminating in the 2019 publication of the “Social Principles of Human-Centric AI” and a new national AI Strategy. Much of the government’s technology strategy has focused on applications of AI and related technologies in the sectors of health and social care, as a key pillar of its overarching plan to build “Society 5.0”, described as a “human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space”.

This paper examines the recent development of policy relating to AI in healthcare as well as the ethical principles proposed to govern it, based on analysis of key documents and semi-structured interviews with several of the architects of Japan’s AI policies and ethical frameworks. It explores how new sociotechnical imaginaries of the future of post-COVID healthcare are being constructed, and how these imaginaries relate to the related development of ethical principles and proposals for the international governance of AI.