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Can a robot learn a master's instinct? In a workshop full of flying wood shavings, a black robot gripper holds an old Japanese hand plane against a board. On the left is Tomoyuki Izu, CEO of ATTRAC LAB, with a name plate; at the lower right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara, hand on chin, looks up at the gripper in surprise. Giant gold letters on the right read "A MASTER'S INSTINCT?"NEWInterviewBUSINESS29 MINCan a robot learn a craftsman's "why"? ATTRAC LAB's Tomoyuki Izu on where Japan can win in physical AI

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In a dry dock at night, a four-legged welding robot clings to a giant steel hull, throwing sparks. In the foreground on the right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara looks up at it in amazement. Text: "HANDMADE SHIPS" and "THE FACTORY ROBOTS FIND HARDEST"NEWFeatureBUSINESS12 MINTo double its shipbuilding, Japan is 60,000 workers short. Can wall-climbing robots and AI that learns from master craftsmen close the gap?Ra Sangyong, Head of Strategic Initiatives at CrossHub, giving two thumbs up against a Seoul night skyline, with interviewer Kaito Ogasawara laughing in the corner. Text: CES award-winning Korean fintech, Your passport is your wallet, No more “not for foreigners.”, three check labels for a CES top-honor blockchain ID, verifying before you fly, and taxis and delivery, plus the CES Innovation Awards 2026 badge.NEWInterviewBUSINESS15 MINIn Korea, foreign tourists can’t even hail a taxi by app. CES-winning CrossHub wants your passport to be your walletA dark factory at night. DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara stands on the left in a black shirt, holding a white hard hat. Large silver text on the right reads "SHIP IT TO PROD", with "WE READ 326 AI FIELD JOBS" belowNEWFeatureBUSINESS10 MINOnly 3% require industry knowledge. We read 326 Japanese job postings for engineers who take AI into the field, and the real ask is to see it through until people use itIn a dark data-center corridor, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara looks at the camera with a grave expression as blank membership cards and envelopes stream out of an open server cabinet behind him. Text: "THE LEAK MACHINE" and "280 LEAKS IN 47 DAYS"NEWFeatureBUSINESS12 MIN280 data leaks in 47 days: counting every one in Japan reveals apps' back doors under attack, and the arrival of AI that can hack
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Can a robot learn a master's instinct? In a workshop full of flying wood shavings, a black robot gripper holds an old Japanese hand plane against a board. On the left is Tomoyuki Izu, CEO of ATTRAC LAB, with a name plate; at the lower right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara, hand on chin, looks up at the gripper in surprise. Giant gold letters on the right read "A MASTER'S INSTINCT?"NEWInterviewBUSINESS29 MINCan a robot learn a craftsman's "why"? ATTRAC LAB's Tomoyuki Izu on where Japan can win in physical AIRa Sangyong, Head of Strategic Initiatives at CrossHub, giving two thumbs up against a Seoul night skyline, with interviewer Kaito Ogasawara laughing in the corner. Text: CES award-winning Korean fintech, Your passport is your wallet, No more “not for foreigners.”, three check labels for a CES top-honor blockchain ID, verifying before you fly, and taxis and delivery, plus the CES Innovation Awards 2026 badge.NEWInterviewBUSINESS15 MINIn Korea, foreign tourists can’t even hail a taxi by app. CES-winning CrossHub wants your passport to be your walletThe plant manager is AI. Over a dusk industrial park linked by glowing lines, Dongmyoung Won, CEO of realizable from Korea, smiles between giant steel letters A and I, while DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara reacts in surprise on the left. A red badge with the Korean flag reads From Korea.NEWInterviewBUSINESS23 MINStart with AI, not with IT. Korea's realizable wants to bring AI to factories one industrial park at a time
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In a dry dock at night, a four-legged welding robot clings to a giant steel hull, throwing sparks. In the foreground on the right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara looks up at it in amazement. Text: "HANDMADE SHIPS" and "THE FACTORY ROBOTS FIND HARDEST"NEWFeatureBUSINESS12 MINTo double its shipbuilding, Japan is 60,000 workers short. Can wall-climbing robots and AI that learns from master craftsmen close the gap?Car plants are full of robots, yet ships are still mostly built by hand. Japan has now decided to build about twice as many ships by 2035, and at today's productivity it would be about 60,000 workers short. DATA TIMES collected 72 robot and AI projects at Japanese shipyards and 28 shipyard tech job postings to show why ships are so hard for robots, how many robots are actually running, and how far Korea, China and the US are ahead, from wall-climbing quadrupeds to AI that learns from master craftsmen.A dark factory at night. DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara stands on the left in a black shirt, holding a white hard hat. Large silver text on the right reads "SHIP IT TO PROD", with "WE READ 326 AI FIELD JOBS" belowNEWFeatureBUSINESS10 MINOnly 3% require industry knowledge. We read 326 Japanese job postings for engineers who take AI into the field, and the real ask is to see it through until people use itForward deployed engineers embed with customers, or with their own company's departments, to make AI work in real operations. DATA TIMES read the full text of 326 such job postings in Japan from 168 companies and recorded what each one asks for. Seven in ten hand one person the whole job: discovery and requirements, prototype to production, and operations and adoption. Only 3% require industry knowledge. Here is what Japanese employers actually want from the engineers who take AI into the field.In a dark data-center corridor, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara looks at the camera with a grave expression as blank membership cards and envelopes stream out of an open server cabinet behind him. Text: "THE LEAK MACHINE" and "280 LEAKS IN 47 DAYS"NEWFeatureBUSINESS12 MIN280 data leaks in 47 days: counting every one in Japan reveals apps' back doors under attack, and the arrival of AI that can hackDATA TIMES collected every leak and intrusion disclosed in Japan from September 1 to October 17, 2026: 280 in all. The main techniques were taking apart smartphone apps to abuse weakly protected APIs, and breaking into contractors and cloud platforms where data gathers. Just before the wave, an open-weight model with strong hacking skills became downloadable by anyone, as experts had long warned. Do defenders need AI too, and how do South Korea and the EU punish breaches?A tower of GPU server racks rises on a stack of blank bond certificates against a burning red sky, with papers falling. On the left, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara in black and white, facing the camera. Text: THE COREWEAVE SHOCK. AI IS BUILT ON DEBTNEWFeatureBUSINESS13 MINDebt up 22x in three and a half years: what the 'CoreWeave shock' reveals about how AI's compute factories get builtOn October 15, Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 3,318 yen, its third-largest point drop ever, with Japanese media calling it the 'CoreWeave shock'. CoreWeave, which rents GPU computing to AI companies, has grown its debt about 22-fold in three and a half years to $35.6 billion, and in the first half of 2026 it paid more in debt service than it earned from operations. Using its SEC filings, we trace how AI compute factories are financed by borrowing against GPUs and customer contracts, what worries lenders, and what holds the structure up.
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Hands-onWe tried it ourselves

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Five map layers stacked over the Shonan coast at night: satellite imagery, building dots, landforms, an earthquake shaking grid and land price pins. On the right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara peers out from behind the band with a puzzled look. Text: AI, 165,411 buildings, one by one. TOO MANY LAYERSNEWHands-onBUSINESS14 MINA disaster register for 165,411 buildings, from free data alone: we had an AI layer satellite, terrain, quake and land-price data onto Fujisawa's PLATEAU modelWe asked an AI to pull all 165,411 buildings in Fujisawa, Japan, from the PLATEAU 3D city model and write five free public datasets onto each one: GSI landforms, large-scale fill sites, J-SHIS earthquake shaking odds, Sentinel-2 satellite change and official land prices. In about an hour and a half it had a city-wide disaster register. Among the tenth of buildings most prone to strong shaking, only one in four would be colored on a flood hazard map; satellites found a development site before the 3D city did; and tsunami-zone land still rose in price. Here is how we built it, where we tripped up, and what a register can and can't say about one building, with reproduction steps.Opening a café? Which station? In a sunny seaside station plaza, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara, in a navy apron, rests his chin on his hand with a doubtful look, holding a tablet showing a map with three circles. On the right, giant black letters on a yellow band read "Which station?" under a small red tag reading "Opening a café?"NEWHands-onBUSINESS16 MINOur editor wants to open a seaside café. An AI wired into Japan's government data skipped the busiest station — and worked out the rent he can affordDATA TIMES's editor-in-chief has a quiet dream: a small café near the sea. So he asked an AI agent connected to Japan's transport ministry data where to open it, in three casual messages. The AI compared three stations on the Shonan coast in just over three minutes, reversed its own pick on the second message, and on the third built a calculator for sales and the rent he could afford. We show the real screens, check the numbers against official statistics, and lay out what government data still can't tell you.Kaito Ogasawara, hand on chin, beside a glowing 3D model of the buildings around Tokyo Station. Text: Japan's national 3D city model. PLATEAU. Supercharged by AI. We analyzed 1,022 buildings with AI!Hands-onBUSINESS9 MINWe plugged AI into Japan's 3D city model and X-rayed 1,022 buildings near Tokyo StationJapan's national 3D city model, PLATEAU, now talks to AI. We connected through its MCP server, tallied flood risk for 1,022 buildings near Tokyo Station, and found a medical facility facing a projected 4.1 m flood. Plus: AI that builds a 3D city in hours.Kaito Ogasawara, surprised, next to sports-drink bottles, an anime character sheet and a DATA TIMES poster made with Lovart. Text: The world's first design agent. Lovart. We put it to work! Made it all with this.Hands-onBUSINESS11 MINAfter AI chat comes the AI canvas. We put Lovart, a $2B+ design AI, to workAn ad with no film shoot, a VTuber character sheet, a movie-style poster: we made them all with Lovart, a design AI that hit 10 million users in five months. Here's what impressed us, plus a report from its official hands-on workshop in Japan.
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Can a robot learn a master's instinct? In a workshop full of flying wood shavings, a black robot gripper holds an old Japanese hand plane against a board. On the left is Tomoyuki Izu, CEO of ATTRAC LAB, with a name plate; at the lower right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara, hand on chin, looks up at the gripper in surprise. Giant gold letters on the right read "A MASTER'S INSTINCT?"NEWInterviewBUSINESS29 MINCan a robot learn a craftsman's "why"? ATTRAC LAB's Tomoyuki Izu on where Japan can win in physical AIIn a dry dock at night, a four-legged welding robot clings to a giant steel hull, throwing sparks. In the foreground on the right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara looks up at it in amazement. Text: "HANDMADE SHIPS" and "THE FACTORY ROBOTS FIND HARDEST"NEWFeatureBUSINESS12 MINTo double its shipbuilding, Japan is 60,000 workers short. Can wall-climbing robots and AI that learns from master craftsmen close the gap?Ra Sangyong, Head of Strategic Initiatives at CrossHub, giving two thumbs up against a Seoul night skyline, with interviewer Kaito Ogasawara laughing in the corner. Text: CES award-winning Korean fintech, Your passport is your wallet, No more “not for foreigners.”, three check labels for a CES top-honor blockchain ID, verifying before you fly, and taxis and delivery, plus the CES Innovation Awards 2026 badge.NEWInterviewBUSINESS15 MINIn Korea, foreign tourists can’t even hail a taxi by app. CES-winning CrossHub wants your passport to be your walletA dark factory at night. DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara stands on the left in a black shirt, holding a white hard hat. Large silver text on the right reads "SHIP IT TO PROD", with "WE READ 326 AI FIELD JOBS" belowNEWFeatureBUSINESS10 MINOnly 3% require industry knowledge. We read 326 Japanese job postings for engineers who take AI into the field, and the real ask is to see it through until people use itIn a dark data-center corridor, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara looks at the camera with a grave expression as blank membership cards and envelopes stream out of an open server cabinet behind him. Text: "THE LEAK MACHINE" and "280 LEAKS IN 47 DAYS"NEWFeatureBUSINESS12 MIN280 data leaks in 47 days: counting every one in Japan reveals apps' back doors under attack, and the arrival of AI that can hackFive map layers stacked over the Shonan coast at night: satellite imagery, building dots, landforms, an earthquake shaking grid and land price pins. On the right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara peers out from behind the band with a puzzled look. Text: AI, 165,411 buildings, one by one. TOO MANY LAYERSNEWHands-onBUSINESS14 MINA disaster register for 165,411 buildings, from free data alone: we had an AI layer satellite, terrain, quake and land-price data onto Fujisawa's PLATEAU modelA tower of GPU server racks rises on a stack of blank bond certificates against a burning red sky, with papers falling. On the left, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara in black and white, facing the camera. Text: THE COREWEAVE SHOCK. AI IS BUILT ON DEBTNEWFeatureBUSINESS13 MINDebt up 22x in three and a half years: what the 'CoreWeave shock' reveals about how AI's compute factories get builtThe plant manager is AI. Over a dusk industrial park linked by glowing lines, Dongmyoung Won, CEO of realizable from Korea, smiles between giant steel letters A and I, while DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara reacts in surprise on the left. A red badge with the Korean flag reads From Korea.NEWInterviewBUSINESS23 MINStart with AI, not with IT. Korea's realizable wants to bring AI to factories one industrial park at a timeOpening a café? Which station? In a sunny seaside station plaza, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara, in a navy apron, rests his chin on his hand with a doubtful look, holding a tablet showing a map with three circles. On the right, giant black letters on a yellow band read "Which station?" under a small red tag reading "Opening a café?"NEWHands-onBUSINESS16 MINOur editor wants to open a seaside café. An AI wired into Japan's government data skipped the busiest station — and worked out the rent he can affordOpenAI: Riemann, solved? Against a midnight-blue background with towering stacks of paper, giant silver 3D letters read "OpenAI," and a gold band below reads "Riemann, solved?" On the right, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara holds a bundle of papers and eyes the camera skeptically.FeatureRESEARCH12 MINAn AI wrote 719 math papers in two weeks. Did OpenAI just solve the Riemann hypothesis? We counted all 372 resultsWhy is life left-handed? Against a deep navy background, giant white letters read "LEFT-HANDED" with a gold question mark. In front of them, DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara holds up his open left hand toward the camera with a puzzled frown. Gold and silver molecule models float around him, and small text above reads "WHY IS LIFE".FeatureRESEARCH14 MINOne extra molecule, and in three rounds it takes over: the self-copying reaction behind the 2026 Nobel Prize in ChemistrySatoshi Ito of Astroscale Japan's PR team in front of Earth, a spent rocket stage and an approaching servicer satellite. Text: Inside Astroscale. Satellites were thrown away. Founded 2013, 5 countries. Inspect, refuel, extend, remove. Got 15 m behind space junk. About 70% of staff are engineers. Building roadside assistance for orbit.InterviewBUSINESS21 MINAstroscale isn't really a space junk removal company. Inside its plan to build roadside assistance for orbitA smiling Ayumu Mitani, CEO of World Area Networks, with part of his body breaking into glowing particles, and DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara laughing at the lower right. Text: Meet the “3DGS guy”. What is Gaussian Splatting?InterviewBUSINESS15 MINAnyone can make 3D now. So why don’t job sites use it? We asked the maker of a Gaussian splatting viewerIn a dim library, a ceiling-high pile of research papers collapses like an avalanche while DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara, half buried and clutching stacks of paper, looks up in alarm. Small text reads "Too many papers?" and large text reads "40,000 a month"FeatureRESEARCH11 MIN40,000 papers a month, double in two years: we counted every arXiv paper to see why it now caps submitters at twoDATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara looking up at the sky on a street in Jeju. Text: Korea, ten days. Working by the sea, connecting with KoreaFeatureBUSINESS15 MINTen days, three Korean cities: after the tourists, Korea wants people to work withA bay at night where glowing data center buildings stand right next to an LNG power plant's chimneys and gas tanks, linked by power lines. DATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara looks on from the edge of the frame. Large gold text reads "BUYING TIME", with a smaller line "Chiba's ¥2.3T AI factory"FeatureBUSINESS12 MINAn AI factory next to a power plant: what Chiba's ¥2.3 trillion data center is really buying is timeKaito Ogasawara, editor-in-chief of DATA TIMES, frowning at a blank ID card in an endless archive of identical cards. Text: Quit the service, and your license photo stays 7 years.FeatureBUSINESS9 MINThey kept your license photo for 7 years after you quit. What Japan's Times Car breach teaches about ID checks without imagesKaito Ogasawara, hand on chin, over a dark aerial view of a Japanese city. Text: Japan's national 3D city model PLATEAU. ¥16 billion spent. Did it pay off? 80% of the first cities: no update in 6 yearsFeatureBUSINESS14 MINJapan spent ¥16 billion putting its cities in 3D. Did it pay off? PLATEAU's report cardDATA TIMES Editor-in-Chief Kaito Ogasawara, wide-eyed with a coffee mug, while a glowing copy of himself works on a laptop behind him. Text: OpenAI DevDay 2026. Meet your AI twin! Pro cut in half?!FeatureBUSINESS15 MINAn AI twin that works while you sleep, and a Pro plan cut in half. Inside OpenAI DevDay 2026, plus a build-off against Claude Opus 5.5Yuichi Ito, co-founder and CTO of Chloros Inc., in front of a rice field and a drone. Text: Former Nikon image-analysis engineer. Drone × AI. Automating crop research! Images are the data closest to the world.InterviewRESEARCH14 MINAI checks crops plant by plant: a former Nikon engineer on automating crop researchKaito Ogasawara, hand on chin, beside a glowing 3D model of the buildings around Tokyo Station. Text: Japan's national 3D city model. PLATEAU. Supercharged by AI. We analyzed 1,022 buildings with AI!Hands-onBUSINESS9 MINWe plugged AI into Japan's 3D city model and X-rayed 1,022 buildings near Tokyo StationKaito Ogasawara pointing at forecast circles over a satellite image of a typhoon near Okinawa. Text: It beat the official US forecast. Typhoon forecasts: AI is starting to win. That circle isn't the storm's sizeFeatureLIFE11 MINAI is starting to beat human typhoon forecasters. That circle isn't the storm's sizeDATA TIMES editor-in-chief Kaito Ogasawara in front of a glowing data sphere with flying documents. Text: Power and text are running out. What AI will fight over next. The answer is sleeping inside your companyColumnBUSINESS10 MINAI is running short of power and text. Its next meal: your company's recordsKaito Ogasawara, surprised, next to sports-drink bottles, an anime character sheet and a DATA TIMES poster made with Lovart. Text: The world's first design agent. Lovart. We put it to work! Made it all with this.Hands-onBUSINESS11 MINAfter AI chat comes the AI canvas. We put Lovart, a $2B+ design AI, to work

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