Investors are being urged to not overlook Japan’s robotic future as unfavorable demographics reportedly are fueling innovation and investment opportunities.
“Japan, simply put, is in the midst of a robotics revolution that will transform nearly every aspect of society and be replicated, in some shape or form, around the world given the aging populations of Europe, the U.S. and even China,” the Financial Times reported.
Japan has been pushing on the robotics frontier for years. As a result, the use of robotics has expanded beyond the Japanese factory floor to include schools, hospitals, nursing homes, airports, train stations and even temples, the FT explained.
No other country in the world has strategically embraced robots as much, with the state’s revised Japan Revitalization Strategy seeking to achieve “a new industrial revolution driven by robots,” the FT said.
The FT explained that the best way to invest is by either directly owning leading Japanese robotics manufacturers and service providers, or through the ROBO ETF, with Japanese companies comprising roughly 30 per cent of the total market capitalization.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is increasingly changing the workplace.
After blazing a trail in online and digital banking, Sweden’s financial industry is now emerging as a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence, Bloomberg reported.
SEB AB, one of Sweden’s biggest banks, is rolling out Aida, a virtual customer-service representative. The goal is to give the actual humans more time to engage in more complex tasks.
There also is Nova, which is a chatbot Nordea Bank AB is introducing at its life and pensions unit in Norway.
Swedbank AB is adding to the skills of its virtual assistant, Nina.
All three are designed to sound like women, based on research suggesting customers feel more comfortable with female voices.
“There are some frequent, simple tasks that we need to deal with manually today, and in that effort we’re looking into AI to see how we can deploy it, and Aida is one,” Johan Torgeby, the chief executive officer of SEB, said in an interview.
Chatbots have access to vast amounts of individual client data, meaning they can quickly handle straightforward customer requests. That in turn frees up human employees to deal with more complex services, like coming up with the best mortgage plan to suit a specific customer.
(Newsmax wires services contributed to this report).
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