Coordinator: Shuichi Sakai Navigator: Hideyuki Nakashima Outline— Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now in the midst of its third boom, sparked by talk of the singularity (popularized as a documentary film in 2012) and the success of deep learning (DL). It was stunning to witness AlphaGo beat the 9-dan human professional champion in the traditional board game Go using techniques that combine DL and reinforcement learning. Even the computer Go programmers were astonished. Apparently, AlphaGo learned from the massive database of existing Go game records (kifu). Now that big data is so readily available, DL has enormous potential over a great many applications. However, DL is only a small part of AI. Artificial intelligence is generally divided into two major themes: pattern recognition and symbol processing. DL falls under pattern recognition technology. But it must be linked to higher order cognitive activities. This involves situated processing and a lot of other unresolved issues. Furthermore, AI is only a small part (vanguard) of information technology (IT). AI was once regarded as an atypical area before it was established in society as IT. After it is formalized and put into practical use, it becames known as IT. For example, 30 years ago character recognition was thought to fall under AI, but now it's a very common technology. Automatic driving may become another example. Currently, automatic driving has a pronounced AI element, but before long it will be classified as IT. And the way big data is handled, it's a combination of part that is logically formulated and can be formally processed as an algorithm (IT) and part that is handled very differently as content (meaning of data) (AI). IT has the potential to fundamentally change the future of the society, but at the present time this is not universally recognized. Furthermore, the design of social systems is not something that can be achieved by technology alone, but involves sociology, the study of law, and discussion of what is right and wrong. And now that we have reached the stage where we can fully exploit artificial intelligence and big data, this will only become increasingly important. This is why it is so important, now that an AI boom is in progress, that we gain the widest possible perspective regarding the future of society and how society should evolve in the years ahead. This course will give students a broad overview of IT as a foundation for AI while also laying out social applications of IT. Starting with a bird's eye view of AI including the history of research in the area, we will then go on to address the handling of big data, robotics, and other related disciplines. Finally, we will consider the future vision of IT including controversy over the singularity, and discuss social applications and legal ramifications of IT.