Original title: Who Will Be the Members of Society 5.0? Towards an Anthropology of Technologically Posthumanized Future Societies
Japan’s Society 5.0 plan imagines people living and working closely with AI and social robots. The paper asks what “human-centered” means when non-human systems also take part in society. It sorts expected members into six categories and compares them with members of earlier societies. All six categories have counterparts in the past, so studying earlier societies may help explain the future one.
Imagine a neighborhood where people, pets, and delivery workers all take part in daily routines. It is hard to describe the neighborhood by talking only about its human residents, especially when different participants affect life in different ways. In this paper, the neighborhood’s different participants stand for Society 5.0’s six kinds of human and non-human members, and looking at earlier neighborhoods helps make sense of the new one.
Japan’s Society 5.0 plans closer cooperation between people and AI systems, including social robots. Understanding who counts as a member of that society—and how its members differ—helps social scientists examine whether it is truly human-centered.
The abstract describes a conceptual comparison, not evidence about how Society 5.0 will actually develop or how its members will behave. It does not name the six categories or detail the model’s application, and it does not establish that lessons from earlier societies will reliably predict future outcomes.
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Who Will Be the Members of Society 5.0? Towards an Anthropology of Technologically Posthumanized Future Societies — Matthew E. Gladden — Social Sciences — doi:10.3390/socsci8050148
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.