Japanese insurer replaces staff with Artifical Intelligence

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Human workers at Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance are set to be replaced by an artificial intelligence (AI) that can calculate pay-outs to policyholders, according to reports.

Some 34 members of staff are likely to made redundant by March 2017 by the insurer, headquartered in Tokyo. Japanese newspaper The Mainichi said that the insurance firm will introduce an AI system based on IBM Japan Ltd.'s Watson, which according to IBM is a "cognitive technology that can think like a human," and "can analyse and interpret all of your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video." The system will analyse medical certificates written by doctors and other documents to collect information necessary for making pay-outs. The system will also be able to che...

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