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Can AI help solve Japan’s labour shortages?

Japan is seeing if artificial intelligence can tackle its increasing shortfall of workers.

To try to overcome this shortfall, a start-up called Ecumenopolis has developed an AI-powered online tool that allows users to have English conversations with its avatar for 15 minutes per session. Faced with labour shortages, Yokosuka City in Kanagawa prefecture has starting using AI chatbot ChatGPT to help with administrative tasks such as transcribing and summarising meetings. That is because it has looked into every possible solution to tackle the double whammy of an ageing and shrinking population for more than a decade: from robots, to women, the elderly and foreign workers.

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