Japan's push into AI-powered robotics is driven less by competitive ambition than by demographic arithmetic. The country's population declined for a 14th consecutive year in 2024, with working-age citizens comprising just 59.6% of the total population.
As a forward-deployed engineer, my primary job is listening to customers. The results are very rewarding. Software engineers can feel far removed from customers, because they often can't see their impact.
The core of the argument is that agentic AI will replace human labor in most white-collar industries and will do so with dizzying speed. The consequent abrupt and massive job displacements will lead to crashes in property values and local tax bases, with devastating impacts on communities and much of the public sector.
