The dramatic development of ICT has made it possible technologically to flow personal data on a global scale and data traffic has been steadily expanding. However, there have been legal barriers to prevent transborder data flows. This issue was already discussed in the OECD more than 40 years ago. I recall it by having been involved in the process of the mutual adequacy recognition between Japan and the EU and fully feel it necessary to proceed discussions on how to realize free flows of personal data on a global scale.

Transborder flows of personal data have been argued in the Council of Europe (CoE) as well as in the OECD. Recently the European Commission has been determining whether a country outside the EU offers an adequate level of data protection. It is noteworthy that how the Commission would use “convergence” or “essential equivalence” in assessing adequacy of data protection in other countries. In Europe, there is a lot of discussions about the use of SCC (Standard Contractual Clauses).

In the Asia-Pacific Region, the APEC CBPR(Cross-Border Privacy Rules) System plays a role in cross-border flows of personal data. Recently the Asian Business Law Institute in Singapore has been studying the personal information protection laws of each country and region and exploring possibilities of “convergence”.

Now that the AI principles have become widespread in the world, the focus has shifted to the implementation in practice. Obviously it is not enough that the companies just copy the AI principles and publish them as their own business policies. The private entities engaged in the development and use of AI must address the implementation of AI principles as an issue of corporate governance. Furthermore, they need to implement the principles within the framework of contractual governance, given that several entities are commonly involved in the development of AI products. In this context, it is useful to recognise that the straightforward shareholder primacy approach to corporate governance has recently been criticised. The AI governance to ensure that the use of AI does not undermine the fundamental values of the society is in line with the emerging focus on the social and environmental issues in the practice of corporate governance (ESG focus). Viewed from the society, the commitment to the AI governance by private entities enables dialogues between the commercial developers and/or uses of AI and the members of the civil society on the use of AI products. By borrowing the well-known framework, it constitutes the “voice” approach on collective decision over the use of AI in the society, as opposed to the “exit” approach relying on the market mechanism to have the better AI products to survive or the “loyalty” approach through the enforcement of the regulation to exclude such AI products as the regulator finds inappropriate. As concerns the use of AI products in the society, on which people’s views can be divided, the “voice” approach seems to be the most efficient.

The current 3rd AI boom, mainly driven by deep learning, which has brought dramatic performance improvements, is beginning to settle down. Rather than it appears that this time we will not enter a winter period as in the past two booms but are making steady progress into our society. However, in order to get the best performance out of machine learning such as deep learning, it is necessary to have plenty of data, and if each data contains some bias, these biases will also be learned, resulting in serious problems such as AI making racist decisions. There are other issues such as anxiety that AI will take away our jobs by incredible increasing of AI performance, the heated debate at the end of last year about using AI to bring back the deceased, symbolized by AI Misora Hibari, and the movement for prohibition of the development of autonomous AI weapons, known as LAWS, etc. In this paper, vague threats to AI will be concretely decomposed and clarified, then discussion about how we can construct symbiotic relation with AI will be held.

Regulations on network neutrality differ from country to country, but in Japan, it was confirmed by the Study Group on Network Neutrality held by the Ministry of Internal Affairs that a　co-regulation approach would be adopted, and up to the present, monitoring and formulation of guidelines on network neutrality have been conducted through the multi-stakeholder process. In the United States, network neutrality regulations were strengthened under the Obama administration, relaxed under the Trump administration, and are likely to be strengthened under the Biden administration. On the other hand, maintaining network neutrality has been recognized as an important issue in the EU, and the ruling of the European Court of Justice has been particularly severe for zero rating services.

This paper examines the current situation in the United States and the development of regulations in the EU in relation to network neutrality regulations, and confirms that it is important to maintain network neutrality, but that approaches to it may differ from country to country. In addition, the background of the regulations varies from country to country, and it is possible to say that there are not so many problems in Japan due to the strict restriction of the secrecy of communications, and that the current situation of such network neutrality regulations can be described as unique, and it is proposed that such co-regulation system may be put on to the international level for discussions as an example. In other words, when considering the issue of network neutrality, it is not necessary to stick to the principles of former traditions that have been considered, but it is necessary to proceed with the examination with the awareness that maintaining access to the Internet is, above all, an important issue related to the freedom of speech that underpins democracy. From this perspective, it is also important to communicate internationally the importance of guaranteeing access to the Internet to the international community, together with the direction of network neutrality regulations to be considered in Japan.

In the context of the network neutrality issue, there are also new issues, such as how to regulate the platform. These issues need to be considered together with the importance of network neutrality.