GreetingMessage from the President

Our long-cherished wish is to "build an industry association that supports a world-class AI ecosystem from Japan with quality as its strength."

With the advent of deep learning and even generative AI using large-scale foundation models, AI has become familiar to us. Without programming that requires specialized knowledge, prompts allow you to leverage diverse AI capabilities. With the development of AI agents, it is even possible to entrust AI to online travel bookings, banking, and securities transactions. While it will be convenient, there are concerns of a significant impact on the social system. In response to the rapid development and popularization of AI, the ISO/IEC42000 series has been developed as AI management standards, the AI law has come into effect in Europe, NIST has developed the AI Risk Management Framework in the United States, and the AI Safety Institute (AISI) has been established in various countries, including Japan, and cooperation has been promoted as an international AISI network. The environment surrounding AI business is moving rapidly and violently around the world.

In this situation, it is not easy to carry out AI business in global competition. Responding to rapidly changing global legal systems, regulations, guidelines, and new technologies, developing business structures, internal processes, and ensuring global competitiveness requires a large amount of resources, which is extremely difficult not only for small and medium-sized enterprises but also for large enterprises. In order to maintain and strengthen Japan's industrial competitiveness as business formats change dramatically due to the advanced use of AI, such as manufacturing, healthcare, and smart cities, it is very important to clarify areas of competition and cooperation and to build a cooperative system between companies across the country in areas of cooperation.

The AI Quality Management Initiative (AIQMI) was established to support the creation of an ecosystem in which participating companies concentrate resources on their strengths, compete, and work together to solve problems in areas of collaboration. We collect and digest relevant information that is popular in the press and on the Internet every day, solve quality management issues encountered in AI business execution, and support the establishment of an ecosystem for participating companies to complement each other's competitiveness and overcome various risks in the global AI business in a coordinated manner.

In the first few years, until the activities of the initiative get on track and are widely recognized both domestically and internationally, we have decided to organize a consortium as a part of AIST so that AIST can do its best to back up the activities. We will fully leverage the results of research such as the "Machine Learning Quality Management Guidelines" that AIST has been conducting since 2018 and the results of international standardization activities such as ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC42 and will strive to achieve above mentioned the long-cherished wish.

However, the main body achieving this long-cherished wish is the participating companies. For the time being, we will operate the consortium free of charge, and we look forward to a wide range of people participate.

February 2025
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