The Importance of ‘Smooth’ Data Usage and the Protection of Privacy in the Age of AI, IoT and Autonomous Robots

The emerging technologies of AI and autonomous robots are forcing us to consider not only improvements in the development of their industrial use but also further urgent research into the ethical and legal issues. In the future, autonomous robots equipped with AI will become more widespread in our society and such robot acquisition of data may lead to data confidentiality issues which we are not able to solve just by focusing solely on AI-data acquisition issues. This paper focuses on the possibilities of privacy violation and the issues which should be considered related to handling personal data and focuses on an introduction to the Japanese Personal Information Protection Act, the mutual adequacy findings between Japan and the EU, the Data Free-Flow with Trust (DFFT) initiative and future legal discussions about the increasing use of AI. Finally, I will point out the need to both clarify and streamline any related future regulations. AI, autonomous robots, IoT, Japan, emerging technologies