A Japanese company is making 34 employees redundant in order to replace them with IBM’s Watson Explorer AI.

Human workers at Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance are set to be replaced by an artificial intelligence that can calculate payouts to policyholders.

After the 200m yen (£1.4m) AI system is installed this month, the company believes productivity will be increased by 30 per cent and that it would save about 140m yen (£1m) a year.

The company also said it believes it will get a return on its investment in under two years.

The 34 employees will be made redundant by the end of March.