| Prof. Seiichi Ozawa, President |  |
The research area of APNNS has originally been covered a wide range of research areas from theoretical approaches to engineering applications that elucidate the information processing of the brain, model the information processing principle, and build artificial intelligence that behaves like a human being. With the progress of ICT and digital technology in recent years, the research area has expanded more and more, and the technical advancement of deep learning and machine learning for big data analysis, which produces enormous not only scientific but also economical values, is particularly remarkable.
AI is now used everywhere, including home appliances and vehicles we use every day, cloud services on the Internet, offices, hospitals, and factories. One said, “A true social implementation is only achieved by technologies that completely blend into our society infrastructures and are going invisible to us.” If brain science and AI become technologies that truly become the fundamentals of our society in this way, our research will have a great impact on human communities. I believe that all APNNS members enjoy these blessed times as researchers in the fields of brain science and AI. On the other hand, we also have a responsibility to properly develop such wonderful brain science research as a technology to make people in every corner of the world happy, and to use it properly in the spirit of SDGs to realize a sustainable society. Let’s continue to work together to achieve such ultimate goals through APNNS.
Although the spread of COVID-19 is still unstoppable, I hope that the virus will be overcome in December, and I look forward to seeing you all at ICONIP 2021 in Bali, Indonesia!