Japan risks becoming an ‘AI colony’, its digital minister warns
The phrase Japan’s digital minister chose was deliberately stark. Hisashi Matsumoto warned that the country risks becoming an “AI colony” if it fails to keep pace with the technology, using the term to defend a government-backed bill that would amend Japan’s personal-data protection law to let AI developers use medical and criminal records without obtaining individual consent.
The warning is grounded in a competitiveness gap the government has acknowledged for months. Japan lags not only other advanced economies but also some smaller ones in AI development, by its own assessment, and the gap has been widening year on year, even as the broader race tightens elsewhere and China narrows the US lead to a few percentage points.
Matsumoto’s “AI colony” framing casts that gap as a sovereignty question: a country that cannot build its own AI capabilities ends up dependent on the systems and rules others set.
The bill...
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