About Us

Senior Vice President, Head of Service Innovation Laboratory Group
Tomoyuki Kanekiyo

As one of the major technological advances in recent years, "large language models" (LLMs) have been attracting attention. Compared to conventional artificial intelligence (AI), LLMs--which learn from vast amounts of digital language data--have made significant advances in terms of their capability of understanding languages. LLMs are versatile and open up unprecedented possibilities in terms of achieving natural, human-like language understanding and response. We are entering an era in which the use of LLMs will bring about rapid access to vast amounts of knowledge, improved work efficiency, support for creative activities, and other benefits that enrich our daily lives and many aspects of society.

However, as LLMs rapidly advance, they also face several technical challenges, which include "hallucination" (generation of unrealistic information), bias in training data and ethical concerns, lack of "explainability," and excessive consumption of computing resources and significant environmental impact. From the perspective of advancing future research and development of LLMs, it is essential to address these challenges head-on.

At Service Innovation Laboratory Group, we focus on the digitalization of the real world (i.e., digitally reproducing people and things), and we are researching and developing technologies that predict the future and provide feedback to the real world. At our core is the firm belief that technology should support the happiness of people and society. With that belief at heart, we always take ethical and social aspects into consideration when pursuing our research and development with the aim of producing sustainable and valuable results. The research conducted by Service Innovation Laboratory Group is divided between the following three research laboratories.

■Human Informatics Laboratories
Human-centric innovative research and development on the new symbiosis between the real world and the cyber world as development of the cyber world rapidly accelerates

■Social Informatics Laboratories
Interdisciplinary research into social values, security, privacy, ethics, laws and regulation, and beyond, toward transformation and development of sophisticated social systems and human societies through ICT

■Computer and Data Science Laboratories
Research on innovative computer science and data science that enables the processing of data that has been difficult to handle in terms of size and complexity and creates useful value for people and society

Under a collaborative system involving three specialized research laboratories, we are conducting research while integrating knowledge across disciplines. Through collaboration between different fields of expertise, we are striving to solve complex issues facing society and achieve technological innovations that will lead to new breakthroughs.