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Report on “Ambient Intelligence Symposium 2006—The
Future: A Tapestry Woven from Threads of Intelligence”
Kohji Dohsaka†, Yasuhiro Minami, Akira Mori,
and Tadahisa Kondo
Abstract
This article provides a summary of the symposium held on September 22, 2006, in which the possibilities, future visions, and problems of information and communications technology (ICT) were discussed with a focus on “ambient intelligence” (kankyo chinou in Japanese) and the importance of NTT’s
basic research related to ICT was asserted.

1. Overview of the symposium
In recent years, information and communications
technology (ICT) has penetrated deeply into theworld around us, and the Internet established by ICT
has been forming a social infrastructure that has been
affecting our lives by providing a great mass ofknowledge. In these circumstances, we need toaddress the role of new knowledge in new environments. NTT Communication Science Laboratories(NTT CS Labs.) therefore decided to hold a symposium aimed broadly at asking people about the possibilities, future visions, and problems of ICT and at
stating the importance of NTT’s basic research on
ICT while presenting proposals for the future of“ambient intelligence” (kankyo chinou in Japanese)and the tasks that we face.
Yoshinobu Tonomura, the Director of NTT CS
Labs., gave the keynote address and raised issues
related to the possibilities, future visions, and problems of ICT within the framework of ambient intelligence. This was followed by a panel session that consisted of position talks by the panel members and free
discussions between the panel members and the audience. In the position talks, Ikuo Takeuchi, Professorof the Graduate School of the University of Tokyo,
Hiroki Azuma, a philosopher and critic, Hiroshi
Ishiguro, Professor of the Graduate School of Osaka† NTT Communication Science Laboratories
Soraku-gun, 619-0237 Japan
Email: dohsaka@cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp

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University, and Eisaku Maeda, Senior Research Scientist, Supervisor in NTT CS Labs. gave talks related
to ambient intelligence. Shinsuke Shimojo, Professorof Biology at the California Institute of Technology
was unable to attend the symposium, but provided a
pre-recorded video. After the position talks, there
were vigorous and informative free discussions on
various topics related to ambient intelligence between
the panel members and the audience, which numbered
about 230. Below, we present a summary of the issues
raised by Dr. Tonomura, the position talks given by
the panel members, and the subsequent discussions.
2. Keynote address
Dr. Tonomura raised issues to be discussed in the
symposium (Photo 1). He said that although our lives

Photo 1. Dr. Tonomura raised issues for the symposium.

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have become more comfortable and convenient withthe development of ICT, it is also true that we feelsomewhat uncomfortable or uneasy about the effects
of ICT. He then described experiences that werefamiliar to everybody. For example, many people likethe convenience of Japanese kana-kanji conversion
systems that convert a kana character string representing the phonetic readings of kanji into a kanji
string. However, there is a downside to this. The lackof practice at writing kanji means that these days weoften cannot remember how to write many kanji byhand despite being able to read them. Another example is email. Although it conveniently enables us tosend messages at any time, it has led to a blurring of
the boundary between our working time and our private lives.
He claimed that one of the factors contributing tothese uncomfortable aspects of ICT was that ICT
research and development has been carried out with afocus on achieving a “convenient, easy, fast, andsecure” environment. When we return to the fundamental principle of what is really good for people,
then we find that spending time and effort to achieve
something or being unable to obtain an answer easily
can in fact be beneficial. Something that one invests a
lot of time and effort on is not easily forgotten, and ahard question with no easy answer gives one a chance
to think deeply.
He then claimed that a broad environmental perspective will be required to enable us to tackle thesecomplicated issues. He continued by saying that wemust approach the issues from the viewpoint of our
new environments including nature, artifacts, ICT,and people and that we must also consider the relationships between various events over a broad timeframe. He pointed out that, in our complicated modern society, we need various types of knowledge from

Photo 2. The panel members.

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fields including science, technology, and philosophy
to allow us to consider various topics. He then said
that he expected the symposium to help clarify problems across a wide range of topics including philosophy, society, ICT, robots, and people through the discussions among the panel members (Photo 2), whowere drawn from a broad range of disciplines.
3. Panel sessions
3.1 Session 1: position talks(1) Ikuo Takeuchi
Professor Takeuchi argued that it is important toconsider the balance between the environment, tools,
and communities. Here, he described the environment as something given passively, in which we felt asense of security and relaxation, tools as things we
use with a sense of controlling them, and communities as things that have evolved through communication between intelligent agents and human beings.
He pointed out that, in terms of technologicaldevelopment, while some researchers aim at developing types of tools that always remain in the background and do not mediate between humans, theresearch on ambient intelligence at NTT CS Labs.
seems to focus on communities and emphasize therole of a form of intelligence that mediates between
people and systems. He then claimed that, in researchon ambient intelligence, it will be necessary to consider whether or not ambient intelligence should
become an equal partner with human beings. For
example, it will be important to study the effect of asystem’s speech on human beings when systems canspeak like a real person.
In addition, he claimed that, in the information
explosion era, people will not be able to make complete use of such an enormous amount of information, and that the importance of editing should beconsidered. He also pointed out that we must investigate technologies for undertaking this editing and acorresponding support social system.
(2) Hiroki Azuma
Dr. Azuma talked about the notion of the control
imposed by our environment, where the aim is tomaintain the social order without trusting humanbeings to do this by themselves. He began by mentioning the relationship between the notion of environment-imposed control and ambient intelligence.
As an example of this control, he described the development of an automobile that would not start if thedriver had been drinking. Such automobiles could
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eliminate drunk driving without the need to educate
and persuade drivers to obey rules.
According to Dr. Azuma, the concepts of multiculturalism, globalization, and libertarianism havespread over the past few decades, and these ideas
respect individual choice. As a result, the system for
maintaining the social order has been changing froma discipline-based system, which places high value
on compliance with rules, to a system based on control imposed by our environment. This change isbeing accelerated by ubiquitous and Internet technologies. One example of this kind of control is therecommendation function common in online shopping that displays candidates for selection based on
the user’s preference and induces the users to buy
additional items. He claimed that, in an environmentcontrolled society, one important issue will be freewill.
Furthermore, he pointed out that the current social
system determines where blame lies at the time of an
accident based on the assumption that people act
according to free will. However, he continued by saying that, in a society where the environment imposes
control, the distinction between humans and systems
would be vague, and the gap between technology andsocial systems would be exposed.
(3) Hiroshi Ishiguro
Professor Ishiguro has used the term “ambient
intelligence” with reference to the development ofrobots that can interact with humans, and he hasargued the importance of the intelligence that is
emerging from the interaction between robots andenvironments. In this symposium, he began by statingthat if we are to develop robots that interact withhumans, then these robots must use information in
their environments flexibly and have perceptual abilities. He also stated that robots that worked closelywith sensor networks would become the standard
model for robots of the future. He said that robots ofthis kind could become a medium that actively affects
humans and that a robot infrastructure supporting
human activities would be achieved through the integration of robotics and the Internet.
Next, he pointed out that, when we are developing
robots to interact with humans, it is important to havea design principle related to how “human” the robots
should be. To enable extensive research on ambient
intelligence to be performed, we must deal with complex interactions between humans and environments
while considering the design principle.
Moreover, he claimed that, if we wish to develop
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robots that are more like humans, we require bothengineering approaches and brain and cognitive science approaches to provide us with a better understanding of human beings. He then advocated“android science”, which combines cognitive andbrain science, and robotics.
(4) Eisaku Maeda
In his speech entitled “The role of new knowledge
in a new environment”, Dr. Maeda dealt with theissues of “ambient intelligence” in terms of a potential new type of knowledge in the evolving ICT environments. He pointed out that the basic ideas of symbiosis, ubiquity, and ambience, all of which are widely known today, are very similar to the issues thatmust be raised with regard to ambient intelligence.
He continued by saying that the changes in the ICT
environments over the last decade have been perceived as large environmental changes that affecthuman beings, and he wanted to get to grips with theissues of ambient intelligence in relation to thesechanges. Furthermore, he mentioned that he wanted
to find the problems that had been left unaddressed bystereotyped thinking. Dr. Maeda claimed that agentsthat support our lives in some small way have beenrequired throughout the ages and that the creation ofsuch agents is one of the challenges that must be tackled by ICT.
He then explained about the relative positions ofbasic research and advanced research using themetaphor “small world and big world”. He suggested
that broadly speaking the world that we recognize is
the small world, and the world that includes unknown
areas that extend over unknown distances is the big
world. Human intellectual activities, especiallyresearch and development in advanced fields, areequivalent to expanding the small world towards the
big one. The boundary between the small and big
worlds is very wide and forms frontier. This also constitutes a field of basic and advanced research. In thepast, people thought of fairies and goblins as agents
linking their small world to the big world. Such creatures can live in the modern world and may give us
the opportunity to retrieve something that is alreadyalmost forgotten. He expressed this as the resurgenceof fairies and goblins.
Finally, he gave the name “mushroom” to a typeof agent corresponding to fairies and goblins thatwould appear in the future society. He showed three
animations entitled “Being watched over”, “Unselfconsciousness”, and “Being connected”, which expressed
prospective scenes 50 years from now. He then pointNTT Technical Review

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ed out the need to undertake research and development that will lead to the society he had mentioned,
and he stated that NTT had already started research
into some aspects of it. In addition, he raised threeissues to be covered in the symposium: time andmemory, environment-imposed control, and necessary approaches for the future.
(5) Shinsuke Shimojo
Although Professor Shimojo could not attend thesymposium in person, he recorded an interview-style
talk on video. He mentioned a large number of topics,
and he revealed that he shared a common awarenessof issues with the other panel members.
In response to a question related to how he saw thechanges in information environments and theirimpact on human beings from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, he first stated that the humanbrain, body, and environments were not isolated but
interacted with each other and formed an intellect. He
suggested that two ideas, namely “brainism”, where
the environment itself is the brain, and the “brain
machine interface”, where the brain becomes a controllable system, may be essentially the same. Second, he pointed out the importance of our bodies,
which serve as links between brains and environments. He stated that he expected research to beundertaken on intelligence based on the existence of
bodies such as “embodied intelligence” in robotics.
He also indicated that he expected to see an approach
to intelligence from phylogenetic and cognitive viewpoints represented by the new term “comparative ecological neuroscience”. Third, he mentioned the roleof cognitive neuroscience in engineering and indicated that we must deeply consider engineering that is
optimal for human beings.
Next, when asked how he considered the future of
ICT and human beings from the viewpoint of implicit brain function research, he answered that he wasinterested in what would happen when implicitly recognized sounds were actually recognized and that
this was closely related to issues about environmentimposed control and free will. According to Professor
Shimojo, the mutual relationship between the implicit cognitive process and the actualized cognitive
process will become a key topic.
Finally he raised two issues. The first was related tohuman comfort and discomfort. When considering
the environment-imposed control, which affects
implicit cognitive functions, as indicated by Dr.
Azuma, the comfort/discomfort issue should be
investigated in more detail from various standpoints.
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The second issue was related to free will. Taking as
an example the fact that a flea kept in a bottle for along time gives up hopping, he expressed his concernthat today’s many consumers might be in the same
situation.
3.2 Session II: free discussion
During the free discussion, Dr. Tonomura served asa moderator, and the four panel members, Professor
Takeuchi, Dr. Azuma, Professor Ishiguro, and Dr.
Maeda, had a lively debate about ambient intelligencewith the audience. The purpose of the discussion was
not to draw a conclusion about the issues of ambient
intelligence, but to clarify various problems and stimulate discussion on ambient intelligence. Below aresome of the issues raised in the discussion.
First, from the viewpoint of environment-imposed
control, it was argued that the boundaries between
human beings and their environment, and between
human beings and machines are becoming ambiguous with the advance of ICT, and that it makes thelocus of responsibility less clear. As regards associated issues, there was discussion of how the social system should be developed to clarify the locus of
responsibility and how the sense of humanness andthe notion of free will could be affected by the fuzziness of the boundary between humans and machines
resulting from technological development.
Second, there was an opinion that as ubiquitous
technology and other technologies supporting ambient intelligence become prevalent in our daily lives,
the issue of privacy needs to be reconsidered. Someargued that systems that watch over us too closely
might make us feel uncomfortable as if we werebeing monitored. There was a related opinion that thedifference between being watched over closely andbeing monitored depended upon the sense of trust one
has in the systems and that mutual interaction
between systems and human beings played a significant role in increasing the sense of trust. Another participant mentioned that, even if people felt as though
they were being monitored by systems, a more important matter was whether or not these systems could
provide people with safety, convenience, and comfort.
Third, as an issue relevant to the information explosion era, there was discussion of the potential problem related to the feasibility of collecting a large
amount of data including statistical information abouthuman behavior, and the importance of developing amethod for handling it was addressed. If statistics
about human behavior are obtained, then various
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kinds of systems interacting with humans could bearbitrarily controlled. On the other hand, some peopleindicated that such statistical information could beshared by many people as well as specific organizations, thus avoiding the privileged use of information.
Another opinion was that once this technology has
actually spread, the social system itself might change
in a way that did not grant benefits solely to specificpeople or organizations.
Finally, it was argued that, to develop an ICT thatmediates between human beings and society such as
ambient intelligence, the impact of the technology on
people and society should be considered from a broad
standpoint that included an ethical perceptive. In thisconnection, it was pointed out that it was difficult toforecast the future 50 years from now and that humanor social systems might change in response to newtechnologies. Furthermore, there was an opinion thathumanness was an important factor for human-interacting systems, so without a deep understanding of
human beings through technology, it would be difficult to find solutions to the problems of how muchhumanness systems should have or what kind of relationship should be built between humans and systems.

yes/no section of the questionnaire, we asked forcomments on several aspects of the symposium, andthe vast majority of participants gave favorable
answers (Table 1).
Furthermore, in open questions we asked for opinions about the issues that were raised and the content
of the panel discussions. We obtained the following
comments: “The symposium has made me think
about the direction in which our society is headingfrom various perspectives related to the theme ofambient intelligence, and it has made me notice previously unconsidered issues” and “I think that wehave to have thorough discussions from the ethicalside and the dark side of science as well as the technological side”. These comments suggest the symposium successfully created the opportunity to enrichdiscussions on the issues of the future ICT from a
broad range of viewpoints.
Meanwhile, it was also stated that “the discussion
topics were so broad that the points of the issues tended to diverge”. While we have to paint the issues inbroad strokes, it is also important to generate discussions that focus on each of the issues presented in the
symposium.
5. Conclusion

4. Assessment of the symposium
To learn the participants’ impressions of the symposium, we distributed a questionnaire. We also put aquestionnaire on the Internet after the symposium. 83
people responded, giving a response rate of 36%. In a

In this symposium, we raised issues related to thepossibilities, future visions, and problems of ICT
with a focus on ambient intelligence, and we successfully addressed various problems related to the futureof ICT through discussions between the panel mem-

Table 1. Results of the questionnaire about the symposium.
Did you become interested in ambient intelligence as a result ofthe
symposium?

Did the discussions help you reach a deep understanding of ambient
intelligence?

Do you think that idea of ambient intelligence is an important issue when
consideringthe role of ICT in future society?

Do you want to carry out research related to ambient intelligence?

Do you think it is worth holding a symposiumon ambient intelligence in the
future?

0%

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20%

40%

60%

80%

Yes
No

100%

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bers and the audience. The discussions helped us torealize that the concept of ambient intelligence could
provide a valuable basis for a profound discussion of
the future visions of ICT. We shall continue to investigate the problems related to ICT deeply and conduct
research and development designed to solve these
problems. A video of the symposium is available atthe symposium homepage [1] for those interested inseeing and hearing the symposium discussions in full.
Reference[1]

http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/KCS2006/ (in Japanese).

Kohji Dohsaka
Senior Research Scientist, Ambient Intelligence Research Group, Media Information Laboratory, NTT Communication Science Laboratories.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in information and computer science from Osaka University, Osaka, in 1984 and 1986, respectively,
and the Ph.D. degree in information science fromJapan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Ishikawa, in 2004. Since joining NTT in
1986, he has worked on spoken dialogue communication between human users and computersand natural language generation. He is a memberof the Association for Computational Linguistics, the Association for Computing Machinery,
the Institute of Electronics, Information andCommunication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan, theInformation Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ),
the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence,and the Association for Natural Language Processing.

Yasuhiro Minami
Senior Research Scientist, Ambient Intelligence Research Group, Media Information Laboratory, NTT Communication Science Laboratories.
He received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees
in electrical engineering from Keio University,
Tokyo, in 1986, 1988, and 1991, respectively. He
joined NTT in 1991 and worked on robust speech
recognition. He was a visiting researcher at MIT
from 1999 to 2000. Since February 2000, he has
been with NTT Communication Science Laboratories. He is interested in modeling for speech
recognition. He is a member of IEEE, IEICE,IPSJ, and the Acoustical Society of Japan (ASJ).

Akira Mori
Senior Research Scientist, Ambient Intelligence Research Group, Media Information Laboratory, NTT Communication Science Laboratories.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronic engineering from Tohoku University,
Miyagi, in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He
joined NTT in 1988 and worked on LSI design.
He studied the fusion of robotics and sensors at
NTT Communication Science Laboratories from1995 to 1998 and worked in the Research Planning Section of the laboratories from 2004 to
2006. He is interested in the mechanism of interaction between robots and humans. He is a member of IEICE and the Biophysical Society ofJapan.

Tadahisa Kondo
Senior Research Scientist, Supervisor, Ambient Intelligence Research Group, Media Information Laboratory, NTT Communication Science Laboratories.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees inadministration engineering from Keio University, Tokyo, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and
the Ph.D. degree in cognitive science from
Nagoya University, Aichi, in 2003. He joined
NTT in 1986. His research interests lie in the
cognitive processes of reading and listening andin modeling their development and aging. He is amember of the Acoustical Society of America,
ASJ, the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, theJapanese Psychological Association, and IEICE.

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