The new era of Evocative Machines. Why you’re going to love it.

We speculate a lot about our future "robot servants" or "robot masters", but that whole metaphor is wrong. It's not going to happen that way. This is a very personal and rather speculative episode. No guests this time. It's just the two of us. In past episodes, you have already met some of the founders at the center of an amazing cluster of startups that have the potential to redefine the way humanity interacts with machines. Evocative Machines is a uniquely Japanese approach that has universal appeal, and I guarantee you that it's not what you expect. So let’s get right to it. Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know Evocative Machines Some evocative machines mentioned in this episode The GrooveX Lovot and Kaname's interview Yukai's Bocco and Shunsuke's interview Gatebox's Hikari (We'll have to get these guys on the show!) Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Once again, I’ve got a special show for you today. There will be no guests no playful banter with someone speaking English as a second language. Today, it’s just you and me. Today we’ll be diving deep into a specific and unique area of Japanese innovation. There is something interesting happening in Japan, a cluster of startups working on something new. You’ve heard parts of it on past episodes, but today we are going into new and unknown territory, and I for one *love* being in new and unknown territory.  It’s a trend I first talked about on Disrupting Japan a few years ago as Evocative Machines. Evocative Machines is a unique Japanese technology emerging from the nexus of artificial intelligence, robotics, and healthcare, and it is something that could utterly transform our world.  It’s a technology that could birth a dozen Japanese unicorns, but we are at such an early stage and this is such a moonshot, it might not result in any at all.     But a lot has changed since I first talked with you about Evocative Machines, so today I’ll explain the technology and its importance, bring you fully up to date, and then we’ll pull out our crystal balls and predict how evocative machines might actually change the world.  Now, at the end of this podcast, I predict that 50% of our listeners will find what I am about to explain as interesting, but not important, another 40% will consider it important, but unlikely and impractical.  And maybe 10% of you will understand that this is going to change the world and will want to be a part of it.  And for those10% of you, I’ll provide a way for you to get in touch. There are amazing things about to happen. Building an Evocative Machine  So what exactly is an “evocative machine”?  Machines are unquestionably becoming smarter, and recently there is a lot of good work being done on creating empathetic machines.  But an “evocative machine” is quite different from an empathetic machine.   The distinction is that empathetic machines are those that can understand our emotions and empathize with us. Evocative machines, on the other hand, are those which evoke emotions in us. Evocative machines are machines that cause us to empathize with them.  So why is this useful, let alone disruptive or transformative? The whole point of automation is to get things done more simply. I don’t want to feel sorry for my refrigerator when it breaks down. I don’t want to sympathize with my microwave about how hard it’s working when it heats my dinner. Life is stressful enough. Why waste our emotional energy on inanimate objects?  Well, when you focus on a single task, that line of thinking is absolutely correct.  But you know something? The Western approach to automation, AI, and robotics is hurting society. It’s grinding us down without us even realizing it, and Japan’s newly emerging evocative machines are the solution to this problem that we haven’t completely realized we have...