The CEO of a $55 billion conglomerate explains why the Japanese concept of 'kosoryoku' is so important in the AI age

Sumitomo Corporation CEO Shingo Ueno says AI can analyze the past, but humans should still envision the future.

Bloomberg/Getty Images Sumitomo CEO Shingo Ueno believes 'kosoryoku' is a key skill in business.

The term translates as 'the ability to envision futures that do not yet exist'.

Ueno says AI can be a helpful research tool, but cannot yet conceptualize the future well.

A little-known Japanese term about imagining the future helps explain both the role — and the limits — of AI in the workplace, according to the CEO of one of the country's largest conglomerates.

Speaking to Business Insider in early September, Shingo Ueno, the head of Sumitomo Corporation, a Japanese multi-industry powerhouse with a market capitalization of around $55 billion, said that AI is a powerful research tool but lacks a crucial human capability: kosoryoku.

Pronounced koh-soh-ryoh-koo, the Japanese term essentially means the power to conceptualize or formulate a vision for the future that has not yet been imagined, something Ueno says AI does not currently have.

"Generative AI is helping me a lot to improve my efficiency.

I'm fully utilizing it," Ueno said.

One of its biggest advantages is its ability to retrieve information quickly .

"If I want to find information about something the company did before, I might have previously spent a day searching for that experience.

Now, the answer comes immediately," he said.

That speed helps Ueno, who has spent over 40 years working for Sumitomo Corporation, follow his preferred management style : resolving issues quickly instead of allowing them to linger.

"My method is to make decisions on the spot," he said.