CSU has introduced a cutting-edge initiative designed to address the rapid advancement of technology and its influence on the future of life.  The initiative, called Society 5.0, is built around the premise that humanity is rapidly approaching a fifth stage of development that includes emerging disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, multi-sensory transfer, augmented and virtual realities, advanced robotics, and synthetic forms of life.   

The Society 5.0 initiative is multidisciplinary and anchored by a 4-course graduate certificate taught across three different colleges, a community engaged seminar series, student led 60 second lecture competitions, podcasts, and intradisciplinary research.  The programming is designed to confront big questions concerning human-machine interfaces, knowledge formation, privacy, security, and what constitutes life and the living.  It prepares participants to conceive and confront potential futures by learning to think in innovative, transdisciplinary ways while working across and between disciplines to better understand problems while designing practical solutions for guiding and shaping innovations in technology for and in the public interest.