Yasuo Kuniyoshi
Professor
Graduate School of Information Science and Techology, The University of Tokyo

This year marks the sixth year that we have invited proposals for research projects under the Special Subject “Co-creating New Society with Advanced Technologies” which was launched in 2018, and the second year for the individual research projects, the framework we established last year to support more exploratory research challenges.

Recent advancements in digital technologies, notably generative AI, have expanded beyond text and image generation to pioneering applications across various sectors, significantly transforming the world. These technologies also present critical challenges, including issues related to copyright, career impacts, credibility, fake videos, and shifts in human relationships and creativity. It is imperative that we address these issues promptly. Our grant program is dedicated to supporting ambitious research that explores these transformative trends and investigates collaborative opportunities between humans and advanced technologies.

This year, we received a total of 41 applications, which was up slightly from last year. In addition, the average age of applicants fell to approximately 35.9 for joint research projects (37.8 last year) and 32.1 for individual research projects (36.2 last year). Overall the number of applications from young researchers has increased. This is a welcome trend considering the importance we have placed on supporting young researchers. However, the outcome of the selection process was that only 2 out of 14 individual research project proposals (5 out of 12 last year) and 5 out of 27 joint research project proposals (5 out of 19 last year) were selected. This means that even though the number of applications increased, the number of accepted ones decreased.

Given these circumstances, we need to meticulously review our methods for soliciting proposals. Upon reflection, it appears that many proposals, while solid, lacked the originality required for both joint and individual research projects. Moreover, there were many rather narrow individual research proposals that were extensions of existing research topics and only involved dissemination of academic results such as presentations at academic conferences. The Special Subject program supports research projects that seek to address the theme of “co-creation” between humans and advanced technologies with a more open-minded and ambitious approach to tackle what questions we need to ask now. We expect to receive proposals that cut across social issues and challenge the design of social systems without being constrained by old values. Next year, we hope to see an increase in the number of creative proposals that are unique to the Toyota Foundation’s grant program. We shall communicate the objectives of the program and its differences from other grant programs more carefully than in the past to promote understanding of them among grant applicants.

Nevertheless, the research projects that were ultimately selected were futuristic and ambitious in seeking to address the social issues surrounding rapid advances in digital technologies. Below, we introduce one of the selected joint research projects and one of the individual research projects.

＜Joint Research＞
D23-ST-0031 Mayu Koike (Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Economics, School of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology)
Social Psychology of the Metaverse: The Interactions, Developments, and Risks of Social Relations between Agents and Humans

In recent years, there have been proposals for services using the metaverse in various fields, including education and medical welfare. However, there has hardly been any discussion of how users recognize avatars and build social relationships in the metaverse. This research is a challenging project that focuses on the experiential and intellectual knowledge that human beings use to build social relationships in the real world with the aim of clarifying the extent to which this knowledge is applicable in the metaverse world while building a social psychology of the metaverse. It is hoped that the results of this research will serve as a guide for sorting out issues when the metaverse is applied in a wide range of fields in the future.

＜Individual Research＞
D23-ST-0034 Kaito Wakabayashi (Project Researcher, Research Center on Ethical, Legal and Social Issues, Osaka University)
Dilution of "Totality of Relationships" Caused by Social Media
AI-based recommendation functions, for example, create bias in the information people receive and connect people with people they want to connect with, contributing to individualization and fragmentation. This study is an ambitious project that will seek to discuss the ideas behind the design of social media in response to such concerns. The distinctive feature of this project is the methodology of observing an individual's life history from both the social media space and the real space, focusing on the lack of context and background in social media, which this research raises as the problem of "the dilution of totality of relationships". It is expected to take a pointed approach to the subtleties of communication style and propose new insights into the state of social media and other platforms.