From information transmission to the mutual understandings

  Interest in artificial intelligence has grown rapidly in recent years, eliciting a mixture of excessive expectations and sobering criticisms. There is no doubt that at the very least, new AI-related discoveries and technologies are transforming mechanisms that act on the world. To invest appropriately in the future, we must understand precisely the technological foundations of AI and its hidden possibilities.

  corevo™ is the brand name of NTT Group’s AI technologies. The appellation highlights the concept of bringing about a revolution through collaboration with a variety of players. corevo™ does not seek to emulate human intelligence or thinking. Instead, it is a set of AI technologies that supports people’s activities by complementing and drawing out their abilities. It seeks to help people overcome the challenges that society faces and improve industrial competitiveness.

  Through the information cycle of gathering data from all things (people, objects, environments) in the real world, reading the data, searching (inquiring) and designing (implementing), feedback is provided to the real world. corevo™ creates models of intelligence from all kinds of data related to people, such as written words, activities, speech, images, music, vital signs, muscle activities, and brain activities. Through this process, intelligence is componentized by disassembling it into a variety of forms and reassembling it. An era will certainly arrive sooner or later in which intelligence is treated as products in the market economy.

  AI technology in diverse forms?from voice recognition and machine translation applied to practical fields to sensing technologies that read people’s psychological and physiological conditions?is entering into real life. In the midst of this development, the time has come to reconsider the essence of communication. Although the flow of physical time does not change, nor drastically does the lifespan of human beings as organisms, environments that surround people are undergoing radical transformation, despite these fixed limitations. We wish to pursue and explore deeply and broadly the essence of communication between people and between people and machines, and draw this future blueprint.

[Related references]

• 1. [Feature Article] AI Efforts in the NTT Group [in Japanese], NTT Gijutu Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 6-37, 2016. (http://www.ntt.co.jp/journal/1602/special.html)
• 2.Maeda, Eisaku: Embracing Information Technology: Reading, Searching, and Designing the World [in Japanese] ([Feature] Communication Technology as the Compass toward the Future), NTT Gijutu Journal, Vol. 27, No. 9, pp. 8-9, 2015. (http://www.ntt.co.jp/　journal/1509/special.html)
• 3.Maeda, Eisaku: Basic Research Exists with the Times [in Japanese] ([Feature] New Developments in Communication Science), NTT Gijutu Journal, Vol. 26, No. 9, pp. 12-15, 2014. (http://www.ntt.co.jp/journal/1409/special.html)
• 4. [Feature] The Frontline of Spoken Language and Audiological Research to Support Communication that Reaches the Heart [in Japanese], NTT Gijutu Journal, Vol. 25, No. 9, pp. 12-13, 2013.(http://www.ntt.co.jp/journal/1309/special.html)

corevo™ can be divided into the following four AI technologies: (1) “Agent-AI” ? AI technology that reads information expressed by people and understands intentions and emotions, (2) “Heart-Touching-AI” ? AI technology that reads mental and bodily conditions that people are not aware of and understands deep psyches, intelligences, and instincts, (3) “Ambient-AI” ? AI technology that reads all things (objects, people, environments) to instantaneously predict and control, and (4) “Network-AI” ? AI technology that organically connects to multiple AIs and grows to optimize the social system as a whole.