Under the Midnight Sun: A Novel by Keigo Higashino

Author:Keigo Higashino [Higashino, Keigo]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

NINE

Monday mornings were when most managers in Tozai Automotive’s Tokyo headquarters held their weekly meetings. The division chiefs would relate any news from the upper management meeting the week before and if any team leaders had things to report, this was the time for that, too.

This Monday in mid-April, Nagasaka, the chief of the patent licensing division, was talking about the Great Seto Bridge that had just been completed and opened to traffic the previous week down in the Inland Sea. Together with the Seikan Tunnel which had opened a month ago, connecting the main island of Japan to Hokkaido in the north, Japan was getting smaller, he said, and more people would be driving cars, which meant increased demand for parts and increased competition to supply those parts. The “Japan getting smaller” bit was doubtless a phrase he had picked up in the management meeting.

When the meeting was over, everyone went back to their seats and started work. Some were manning the phones, others pulling out documents, and others hurrying out of the door. An average Monday morning.

Makoto Takamiya started his day just like any other. He began by cleaning up the patent applications he’d left from Friday. In order to give himself something to warm up with, he liked putting off less pressing work until the next week. Yet before he could even finish that much, the E team was ordered to assemble. The call came from Narita, who had just been promoted at the end of the previous year.

The E team was the group responsible for everything electronic: electrical systems, electrodes, and computers. There were five of them working under Narita.

They gathered around the boss’s desk.

“This one’s important,” Narita said, his expression a little hard. “It has to do with our manufacturing expert system. You all know what that is?”

Everyone nodded except Yamano, a new recruit, who said, a little sheepishly, “Sorry?”

“Do you know what an expert system is?” Narita asked.

“I’ve heard the term, but that’s about it.”

“How about AI?”

“Artificial intelligence, sure,” Yamano said, though he didn’t sound all that confident.

The world of computing had been making rapid advances, in particular in the field attempting to make computers function more like human brains. For example, when two people passed on the street, they didn’t calculate the distance between them in order to avoid a collision. Rather, they used experience and intuition to adjust their speed and bearing. Adding that kind of flexible thinking and decision-making to computers was the goal of AI.

“Expert systems are one application of AI—in effect an attempt to replace experts in certain fields,” Narita explained. “Now, a human expert in a particular field isn’t just a walking bag of facts; they have the know-how to use those facts. If you can build that know-how into a system along with all the relevant data, and teach someone how to use it, then even a novice can make decisions like a pro—that’s what an expert system lets businesses do. They’re already used in fields like medicine and financial analysis.

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