Mr. Hiroyuki Ito
CEO of Crypton Future Media Co., Ltd. / Chairman of NoMaps Executive Committee / Executive Director of Hokkaido Open Data Promotion Council / Visiting Professor of Hokkaido University of Information
After working at Hokkaido University, established Crypton Future Media Co., Ltd. in July 1995 in Sapporo. With more than 100 partner companies around the world, more than 30 million sound contents are among the largest in the world. We are constantly working on service construction and technology development based on sound, such as DTM software, music distribution aggregator, and 3DCG technology. He is also known as the creator of the vocal sound source software "Hatsune Miku". Received the Medal with Blue Ribbon in 2013.
Mr. Yoichiro Wada
President and President of D4c Academy Co., Ltd./Executive Officer of Data Four Seas Co., Ltd./Visiting Professor, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University University/Visiting Associate Professor, Graduate School of Information Science and Systems, Kyushu University
Joined Data Four Seeds Co., Ltd. in 2008 after obtaining a doctorate from the Graduate School of Tokyo Institute of Technology. Since then, he has been active as a data scientist for more than 10 years, participating in numerous projects, mainly in the fields of marketing and finance. In addition to data analysis, he also provides system development and consulting for building a data analysis team, leading many projects to success as a project leader. In 2009, he won the Excellence Award at the data analysis competition sponsored by the Association of Management Science Research Groups.
*The profile is from December 2019, when the interview took place.
GAFA Killerを育てる
Wada:
The world uses data represented by GAFA, but there is too little sense of crisis in the current situation where all the data generated by Japanese people is taken by GAFA. We have to go get that data back, and Japan has to take the initiative. In a nutshell, what I want to do now is raise GAFA Killers and recapture data together! is.
Hokkaido is truly a treasure trove of diverse data. It is better to take up the areas that have just started and have not yet been eaten by foreigners before they are taken over by foreign countries.
* GAFA is a term that refers to four companies in the United States: Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.
Ito:
It is actually being sucked overseas. Most of the dairy data has been absorbed by the European bloc. Recently, agricultural cooperatives have become smarter. In the old days, cows were milked by bending down and squeezing with their hands, but now the cows enter the milking machine by themselves. Go there, the milking machine is automatically attached to the cow's milk, and the milking starts. When cows enter there, food comes out, so they enter voluntarily. When the milking is finished, the gate opens and the cow leaves.
Most of the milking machines that made dairy farming easier were made in Europe. My rural high school also started using it and I went to see it. It's connected to the cloud and everything goes to Holland or somewhere. Ah, it's being sucked here as well. Not only milk but also data is sucked.
I started working on open data about two or three years ago, and there is a lot of data from Sapporo and Hokkaido, and there is a lot of data from agricultural cooperatives and seafood processors. In order to let people know how to use such data to bring about good things, we have released some data as open data. I'm thinking about how civic tech-like things that make use of it will come out into the world and help people's lives.
Wada:
I want to spread data science all over the country, and even in Japan, there is talk of Society 5.0 and super smart society, but that is just the development of rich companies in Tokyo. This is the scenario, and in the medium to long term, I can already see the forecast that Tokyo will eventually become the strongest.
If you think about a real super smart society, one of the big targets of data science is "society".In Japan, Osaka and Nagoya are the same, but data science is only in local cities such as Sapporo and Fukuoka. If is not used, it will not become a super smart society in the true sense.
If we are moving towards a super smart society, we who can handle data will be very profitable, so I thought I would like to do more data science, but in fact there are no data scientists in Sapporo yet, so it seems impossible. . So, I thought I should start with an education business that trains data scientists, so I came to NoMaps in 2019 to investigate that. I don't know if there is a business here until I try it, so when I first tried to open a school, I met President Ito.
Ito:
That's right, you can use our conference room, because you don't need money. Instead, I was asked to be an engineer at our company. It's kind of like a light glue.
Wada:
Yes, we decided to open a data scientist training class from January 2020 with a light touch. After continuing, I realized that there is no data science business in Sapporo yet, so there are no people who come to receive it. It would be nice to be able to make use of the skills learned in Sapporo elsewhere, and if there is no business, I guess there is no idea to create one. After all, it is useless unless you create a job for data analysis in Sapporo.
Therefore, President Ito and I are thinking about providing a service that collects and analyzes data from companies in Sapporo and Hokkaido together with practical classes.
Ito:
I'm not a data scientist, but I went to various local governments to do something like a hackathon to compete for open data utilization ideas. I started the Open Data Promotion Association thinking that it would be easier to do.
And the first thing I worked on in dealing with open data was "education." Develop IT human resources at hackathons. You can also teach design by visualizing data. It was easy to explain that education has great benefits. Expanding into the field of data science, companies and local governments don't know how they can help, so while explaining that let's develop human resources, we have created a flow to have open data provided. .
There is a strong connection between open data and data science. Data cannot be seen unless it is made public, and even if it is made public, value cannot be created without the ingenuity of engineers who can analyze it, and the data must be processed.
Wada:
But it is certainly so. The global business of collecting data and processing it to create value has already been established, and when the world is heading in that direction, Hokkaido is actually full of data. Even though it was born, it wasn't being utilized, and the data wasn't being collected.
Data is new oil
Wada:
When we move toward Society 5.0 or a super smart society, and when we try to make open data available, the data created in Japan is not secured in Japan. Food self-sufficiency rate, but the data self-sufficiency rate is low, and everything is absorbed by GAFA in the United States. In Europe, there is something like GDPR, which protects data from being sucked up outside, and in China, there is something like Great Gateway, which uses Firewall to keep Google out of the way and protect data. there is We are protecting data, nurturing homegrown companies like Baidu and Alibaba, and nurturing our own brains.
Ito:
Trade protectionism protects industries. Korea probably does too.
Wada:
So is South Korea. Google could probably be used in South Korea, but the payment system is relatively strict, so Amazon couldn't enter.
Ito:
And then they made something similar in their own country.
Wada:
Gmarket is popular in South Korea, and South Korea also protects its own data.
It was at the 2011 Davos Conference that I started saying that data is new oil. Data is new oil, in other words, data is new oil, so we have to protect it. If it were oil, oil-producing countries would desperately protect their resources, and they should never have their oil taken away from them, but everyone realizes that the moment they become data, they are taken away. I don't think so. That's really bad.
While doing business with them, I would like to leave the data generated in Hokkaido in Hokkaido and start an industry using that data in Hokkaido. Hokkaido needs brains to process and find value just with data like crude oil.
Ito:
In fact, that's where the research is going. We will promote the development of human resources, activate startups, and make good use of local data in that cycle to industrialize.
Wada:
It's there, isn't it? I'm thinking there too.
ムーブメントを先読みする
Ito:
When I was a staff member at Hokkaido University about 30 years ago, I was involved in a computer design support system called CAD in the Precision Mechanics First Course. I started artificial intelligence in the middle of the 1980s in the laboratory where I was doing development to actually move it. In the second boom of artificial intelligence, things like neural networks were just emerging, and my teacher was writing a book about that, and graduates were studying AI and finding employment at universities and companies. rice field.
When the 3rd boom of AI came, I thought that the professors at that university would be the people who knew about such technology, so I visited them, but they had already withdrawn from AI. I thought it would be nice to do AI again because I had the foundation, so about five years ago, I decided to do something by combining the research of such professors and the data of the local government. I made a proposal and went to discuss it with Professor Matsubara at the university, Sapporo City, Hokkaido, etc., but at that time, it seems that artificial intelligence still did not come to mind...
Wada:
Ah, it's barely there.
Ito:
It seems that a boom will come about a year after that, and when I proposed it, it was nothing. What are you talking about? I want to advance agriculture, I want to advance urban development, but I don't know how to do it. Conversely, AI engineers and researchers say they want to study, but they can't do anything because they don't have the data. If you connect the unevenness there, you will be able to do something. I thought it would be nice if we could industrialize it and contribute to something like making the city more efficient, so we started talking about using open data.
Wada:
I agree. If we don't do that, I think Japan has no chance of winning.
Ito:
I'm completely defeated.
Wada:
When you lose to rags, if you take all the data you can, there's no way to win anymore. Tokyo is already completely Americanized, or rather, it has suffered too much erosion, and even if a startup were born there, I don't think it would be able to compete on the world stage.
Perhaps the areas with potential right now are Sapporo and Kyushu, which have not been subjected to such erosion. I think that local cities, cities next to Tokyo, have more potential. In fact, companies that are called big companies aren't all from Tokyo, but if they're from Hokkaido, they're Nitori, and like Crypton, they're flying around the world with Hatsune Miku. There are many such companies in rural areas, so instead of competing in Tokyo, it would be better to challenge the world directly from the region where there is actual material to compete. You don't have to aim for Tokyo anymore.
Ito:
Rather than getting approval from Tokyo or Osaka, it would be better to have a contract directly in the US or China.
Wada:
I'm an expert in data analysis, so my job is to create new services by analyzing the data that can be used to compete. There is a sense of crisis that if we do not create a situation in the next 5 to 10 years to create a bang bang of startups from Hokkaido and Sapporo that will compete with the world, we will probably not be able to compete anymore.
Ito:
It might just be too bad.
Wada:
It's a sense of danger that it might be the last minute.
北海道のポテンシャルと戦略を
Wada:
If we were to compete in the Japanese economy, we would have people from Hokkaido come to Tokyo. We have the potential to create unknown services using unknown things, but we haven't secured the brains. Instead of taking the precious brains nurtured by Hokkaido universities and bringing them to Tokyo, which has already been turned into a business and is in a do-or-die situation, keep them here in Hokkaido and create an industry here. Fight the world from here. I believe that this will not only be good for Hokkaido, but it will also be good for Japan.
Ito:
It will also benefit the world.
Wada:
In order to assist companies in Hokkaido, we will start by educating data analysts, and while I am studying, I want to create something unique to Hokkaido. I think it would be great if we could create a Hokkaido model and have all of Japan become like that. Strange story, I think this is the turning point for Japan, and if Hokkaido or Fukuoka doesn't break out, I'll lose.
I also have children, so I want to leave a bright future for my children, and I want Japan to be a country with possibilities. I want my children to live with hope when they grow up. I don't think my child will be able to lead a happy life in a country that is in tatters. That's why I think it's our responsibility as adults to leave hope to Japan, a country that has been handed down from generation to generation, and I think Hokkaido and Fukuoka are the places where we can do that now. This is because, along with Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Kobe, Sapporo and Fukuoka are among the top cities in terms of GDP by metropolitan area. To the extent that I don't think that if I don't succeed here, I won't succeed anywhere else. That resonates with Mr. Ito's vision, doesn't it?
Ito:
Perhaps because there are many people in Hokkaido who are not bound by ties, if we can share our goals, we can easily unite. I think that is one big value. I think that they will listen to the stories of agricultural groups and tourism groups, and they will ride.
However, they had little experience in creating their own economy, so they didn't seem to have a clue about business. I'm addicted to getting subsidies like that's fine.
Wada:
I also wanted to do business in Hokkaido, and I announced it at NoMaps in 2019 with the vision I mentioned earlier. There are many gentle and kind people, and it seems that the pioneer spirit, or the spirit that had to fight against the cold and barren land, is rooted in it. I thought that there was a weak point.
I want to say that if we don't make our own money and run society ourselves, the next step won't come and we won't be able to create a lasting society. I think that going around receiving subsidies is not a solution, it's just using tax money, and I think that there are many people who are skeptical about turning it into a business when they actually have to do it themselves. .
Ito:
It's kind of a kind thing to say that you can get a little more money if you do it a little more like this, just like what the other person told you to do. And that's one of the good things about Hokkaido.
大学生、大学院生のうちに気付いてほしいこと
Wada:
At NoMaps, I said a little more that I think it's better for everyone to think about their own benefits. I think that will motivate you to do so. You can't fight in the world just for the purpose of getting along. I travel to universities all over the country for recruiting and other things, but I think it's a shame that students from rural areas tend to inherit the same culture and are ignorant about business.
ちゃんとその社会問題を見るべきだし、本当にとがっていれば、北大のドクター(Ph.D.)とかが大手の会社見て東京行きまーすじゃなくて、北海道にいながら世界と戦ってほしい。大企業の歯車になって戦おうなんて、まともな教育受けた人間がやることじゃない(笑)。北海道で世界と戦う何かを始められなかったら、子どもたちに何残すの?っていうのが私自身の自然な感覚です。でも、みんなのんびりしていて、そういうビジョンが見えていない。
Ito:
Taking pictures in front of the Clark statue has become a tourist attraction, but that kind of spirit must have existed in the beginning. But now that I've lost my ambition, I'm just wondering if I can get a job somewhere good. Science alone is not enough. For example, it is not about how well you can use a kitchen knife, but rather about what kind of food you make and how you can make people happy and earn money. is necessary, and it should not end with just being dexterous.
Wada:
Well, it certainly is. It tends to happen when you are just doing research at university. I've been taking data science classes for a long time, and I'm aiming for social implementation of data science, but it's not that there are problems with data science first, but there are problems first. It doesn't mean that there is a problem in the world as a problem, but that there is the current as is, and it starts from where someone thinks that this is a problem.
For example, the current situation where data is collected by Google as is is a problem, and the problem is that it is okay because it is convenient for Google, and the difference between the ideal to be is like this is actually a problem. , In fact, it is the emergence of science after setting the task for it. I would say use data science to solve this problem. At university, someone raised a problem, and set a task and a goal for it. Then how can we do it well? I want students to understand that this is nothing more than training to use a kitchen knife well.
Ito:
Problems can be solved, but problems are harder to create. The ability to set tasks is something AI cannot do.
Wada:
Well, you can't.
It's a human job, and that's the significance of graduate school research. I have to get people interested in setting up problems in society.
Ito:
In practice and in the field, how much you will be rubbed, sweating, squeezing, scratching your head, and what comes out will become your own ability. Without it now, learning has been completed within the framework of learning. It is necessary to have experience to bring it to business from there, and first of all, in order to solve the problem, you have to notice the problem yourself. Tasks are not given.
Wada:
It is very important that you notice the problem.
(後編はこちら)