Hello, I'm David Plott, Emlex's managing editor for Asia, based here in our bureau in Hong Kong.

If you're new to Emlex's ongoing podcasts, a very warm welcome to you.

If you've listened to our podcast before, welcome back.

Today we're headed to Japan.

Now, Japan was once at the cutting edge of industrial development, but times have changed.

In Japan, as in other major economies, manufacturing is in decline, and the knowledge economy and big data are taking on a greater role as drivers of growth.

The increasing importance of the digital economy has great potential to propel Japan into a new phase of expansion.

But that shift is not without its complications.

An important report released by the Japanese government just last week raised the curtain on some of those issues.

Here with me today to talk about the challenges that big data poses for

Japan is Emlex correspondent Toko Sekaguchi. Welcome to this podcast, Toko. Thanks, David. Toko, this new

report by the Japan Fair Trade Commission identifies a number of concerns around data and the digital economy.

What are the key issues at stake here?

Well, David, with the growth of AI, artificial intelligence, and IoT, Internet of Things,

and other data technology, collection and analysis is becoming widespread and integral to businesses,

which raises the issue of fair and open use of data and the need to update antitrust policies

to prevent a handful of companies from controlling access to huge and or essential data.

There's also the antitrust aspect of the network effect.

And this is when more users generate more data,

which leads to improved services through deep learning

and other artificial intelligence technology,

in turn, attracting more users.

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