05 November 2025

Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. is honored to announce that its collaborative research project titled “Human-in-the-Loop machine learning system for disabled-led AI development” (hereinafter referred to as "the Research") has received the 2025 JSAI Annual Conference Award from the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI), the largest academic society in the field of artificial intelligence in Japan. This project was led by Yutaka Hoshina of the Development & Planning Department, Analysis Technology Research Center, Sumitomo Electric, and Kasumi Ushio and Ryusuke Ueki of Qualtec Co., Ltd.

The 2025 JSAI Annual Conference Award is given to outstanding achievements selected from the research papers presented at the JSAI conference held in May 2025.

Since 2021, Sumitomo Electric is promoting the Inclusive AI Development (hereinafter referred to as “InAIDⓇ”*¹) in collaboration with its special subsidiary, Sumiden Friend, Ltd. This initiative was recognized with the 2023 JSAI Incentive Award*2 for allowing employees at Sumiden Friend to be actively involved in the improvement process for Sumitomo Electric’s key products, such as electric cables, through the “annotation work,”*³ an initial step for AI development.

In the Research, our company, jointly with Qualtec Co., Ltd., has developed a tool enabling employees with disabilities to carry out all the AI development processes ranging from the annotation work through the AI model training, without support from experts. Thus, we have established a working environment that enables them to actively participate in solving real-world issues within the company.

The scheme of InAIDⓇ is expected to enable the development of AI for analyzing images of various products, not limited to cable products, acquired using diverse techniques such as optical microscopy, X-ray computed tomography, and electron microscopy, and broaden the scope of tasks that employees with disabilities are responsible for. Moreover, this scheme is also expected to contribute to the accelerated application of AI for real-world issues.

Our company promotes a working environment where workers can feel a sense of growth and self-fulfillment through their tasks, as part of our basic policy for human resource development. We are determined to continue this effort so that everyone can work energetically regardless of whether they have a disability or not, by offering opportunities to pursue rewarding careers, be independent, and take an active role.

For more details on the Research, please refer to the relevant paper below:
"Human-in-the-Loop machine learning system for disabled-led AI Development” (Japanese version)
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjsai/JSAI2025/0/JSAI2025_2F1GS1002/_pdf/-char/ja

Comments from Yutaka Hoshina of the Development Planning Department, Analysis Technology Research Center, Sumitomo Electric:
I am deeply honored that the Inclusive AI Development that we have been steadily promoting since 2021 was recognized once again. Based on the spirit of “Goho-Yoshi” ("Five-Way Win" or multistakeholder capitalism), I aim to develop this effort within our company as well as across Japan, as an initiative to enhance our product competitiveness and the well-being of all employees.

*1  InAIDⓇ and the logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.
*2  For more details, please refer to our company’s news release below:
    “Sumitomo Electric’s Yutaka Hoshina Receives the 2023 JSAI Incentive Award”
     https://sumitomoelectric.com/press/2024/07/prs032
*3  Annotation work refers to a process to create labeled data in AI development.