By Yoshida Suzuka
ON 26 February, Kojima Industries Corporation, which supplies parts to Toyota Motor Corporation, was damaged by a cyberattack. On the 23rd of the same month, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan issued a warning to all Japanese companies to take cyber security measures, and on the 24th, the Financial Services Agency issued the same warning. The Japanese government’s warning was as if it had foreseen the damage to Kojima Industries.
Toyota Motor is the world’s largest producer, and 15 companies form the Toyota Group. There are 41,417 companies that do business with the Toyota Group, and the largest number of subcontractors is 1821 that is software contract development (as of 2019 announcement). Group companies in which Toyota shares capital can afford to hire a large number of human resources dedicated to cyber security measures. However, like the companies that were attacked this time, subcon tractors that deliver parts do not have much surplus profit and cannot afford to hire experts for cyber security measures. This is because the number of engineers in the digital field, including security measures, is insufficient in Japan as a whole, and the cost of human resources is extremely high.
Then why is there a shortage of digital human resources? Japan has traditionally focused on the manufacturing industry because it creates employment. Technology is stored in each company, and young people learn technology from senior human resources after getting a job at the company. However, in the fields of AI and data utilization, which are relatively new technologies, the speed of technology updates is so fast and there are no human resources who can catch up with innovation, so there is no technology transfer among AI and digital fields that can be seen in the field of manufacturing.
On June 14, 2019, the Government of Japan announced the “World’s Most Advanced Digital National Creation Declaration / Public-Private Data Utilization Promotion Basic Plan” by the Cabinet decision. According to the plan, the supply-demand gap for digital human resources in Japan as a whole is about 220,000 in 2018, and it is predicted that it will expand to about 450,000 in 2030. In particular, the output gap for AI human resources is estimated to widen from 34,000 in 2018 to 124,000 in 2030. Therefore, it was decided that all the people would develop knowledge and skills related to mathematics, data science, and AI, and provide AI education at all levels such as elementary, junior high and high school, colleges of technology, and universities. It is also a policy that advanced human resources are expected to discover and resolve actual problems with AI by themselves. Name it “AI Strategy 2019”.
However, nearly three years have passed since the plan was announced, but it has not progressed. There is a shortage of human resources to teach because the company hires human resources with knowledge and skills internally and does not appear in the educational field. The output gap for digital human resources is only widening. Private companies are so cynical of the government to say that the government may just advocate the policy and actually leave it to the private sector.
