Japan’s Council for Science & Technology has delivered to the government a new report recommending long-term research goals, in which it urges development of computers that can learn, can understand meaning, can recognise speech without having to be trained to an individual speaker, and filter out background noise: the report forecasts that information and electronic technologies are likely to figure prominently in the future in disaster prediction, home health care, education and improvement of the working environment, but warns that new technologies are likely to create new social problems, suggesting new rules will be needed to protect individuals’ privacy and intellectual property.
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