Why people are afraid to trust AI. And how to fix it

Artificial Intelligence makes a lot of people nervous. That's understandable.

Today we sit down with Ken Fujiwara of Hacarus to discuss why that is, and what this startup is doing to fix it.

As in so many other fields, when comparing AI in Japan and the West, we find that the technology is fundamentally the same, but the social attitudes and business strategies are very different.

Ken is a serial entrepreneur, but running an AI startup was never part of his original plan. He had bigger goals in mind, and we talk about how he plans to pivot back to them someday.

We also discuss Kyoto's booming startup ecosystem and why one CEO has publically stated he wants to destroy it.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.


Show Notes

The problem with Deep Learning and how Hacarus is unique
The importance of founder's hidden failures
Why Ken left Sony to start a startup
How to know when you need to pivot
Why pivoting is hard in Japan
The integrator business model and why it works in Japan
Pivoting a startup to back to your dreams
The importance of explainable AI
Why you need to know about Kyoto startups
Why one company wants to destroy Kyoto's startup ecosystem
The reason you see so many interesting IoT startups coming out of Japan now


Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Hacarus

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Get in touch by email: inquiry@hacarus.com


Transcript
Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs.
I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.
As you can imagine, I get asked a lot about how the Japanese startup ecosystem is different from others and I love that question.
The problem is that people usually aren't really happy with my answers. It seems that everyone wants to hear stories about anime or strange gadgets, or cool trends in gaming, and yeah, there's plenty of that in Japan too, but the things that are really unique and interesting like evocative machines and the integrator model, and the role enterprise has to play in supporting startups, those things take a lot of time to explain to anyone who doesn't already understand Japan, at least a little bit, but they're important. 
Today, we sit down with Ken Fujiwara of Hacarus and we're going to look at how Hacarus is using the integrator model to jointly develop AI products with large enterprises. Ken also explains how he had to pivot Hacarus away from his original vision and how he might be able to pivot back to it in the future. We talk about the challenges of pivoting and staying true to your mission, cover a few very good reasons why people don't trust AI, and we talk about one CEO who has made it his mission to destroy a startup ecosystem.
Oh, and near the end of the show, we have a really interesting discussion about the startup ecosystem in Kyoto. There really are some amazing things going on in Kansai, but you know, Ken tells that story much better than I can, so let's get right to the interview.

Interview
Tim: So, I'm sitting here with Ken Fujiwara of Hacarus, and thanks for sitting down with me today.
Ken: Thanks for having me.
Tim: Hacarus is a collection of AI platforms that's targeted both at medical and industrial use but you can probably explain this a lot better than I can, so what exactly does Hacarus do?
Ken: Alright, so Hacarus is basically AI startups and provide AI desk applications for medical, such as AI-enabled diagnosis solutions and for manufacturing industry, we provide digital inspection services, and one of the core differences of our company is that we don't use a mainstream AI technology called deep learning. We use something else.
Tim: I've noticed that, so you've talked a lot about your ability to create AI models based on very small data sets. How does that work? I mean, what exactly are you guys doing, if you don't mind me asking what the "secret sauc...