The Fourth Industrial Revolution from a Moroccan perspective.
We can all easily recall the days we got our hands on our first laptops, smartphones and tablets. Along with the internet these tools dramatically changed the way our world works.
One could get his hands on whatever information one wanted with a simple touch; the world does no longer seem as huge as it used to be. You could be chilling at your house in Agadir, Morocco, and at the same time, go on a tour at the Louvre museum in Paris. Could it get any better?
Well it seems that it could, because 30 years from now we are going to be able to literally ingest information. We will only need to swallow a pill to learn Computer programming, speak Chinese or maybe break dancing!
As for now, experts plan on building intelligent machines capable of communicating with each other. Factories will be managed solely by these machines throughout the whole production and delivering processes. The objective is responding to individual needs with efficiency and flexibility. This digital transformation is referred to as the fourth industrial revolution.
As members of an institute called “Connect Institute” we aim to create a network of creative, open minded and innovative people, by spreading and sharing personal knowledge and experiences. We have different workshops and activities hosted by experienced people in different domains. We are a group of people who have passion for research, innovation, learning new things and acquiring immense knowledge. We often rely on the internet to satisfy our hunger. This fourth revolution will enable us to broaden our network by adding smart machines capable of communicating, thinking and interacting with us. It would help providing right information at the right time.
Also as university students we are often asked to do researches and projects. In our searching process we always find ourselves with a lot of information that needs to be filtered and analyzed which takes a large amount of time; and even after going through these stages we might commit an undeniable amount of mistakes due to stress. Imagine if we could have intelligent machines with higher level aspects of human intelligence at our service. It would be of great help to us by offering right information at the right time and assisting our decision making while avoiding mistakes easily made by humans. Not only that but we could find ourselves with the completed research or project ready to be submitted in a matter of minutes or even seconds!
After a stressful day at university, getting back home to a welcoming mother or a family member, chatting with them while having a nice homemade meal is the best natural way to get rid of all the accumulated stress and tension. What if we were living far from family? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an AI that resembles that family member? A machine you could easily interact and communicate with. We could both get emotional while watching a movie, tell jokes to each other and it could even comfort you if needed. Living with a machine that surpasses our intelligence and has the same emotions as we do, might be useful and comforting. But what if those machines are no longer satisfied with being labeled as “Just machines”? What if instead of being ruled by humans, they get to rule the world ? Like we have seen in the most interesting scenarios in some science fiction movies.
The question will always be: Would it be possible to have a healthy human-machine relationship without any bad emotions getting in the way?
Let’s say you got into a fight with a roommate, because you were always bullying him or her into cleaning, doing laundry and writing your papers for you. It would certainly affect your relationship with each other. Now if we suppose that that roommate has it in them to kill you for using them and they could easily get away with murder either by deceiving the police or conspiring with them. They would certainly do it without hesitation. Now, imagine that we lived in a world full of intelligent machines that have the same killing instinct as your roommate. Obviously, it could only be a matter of time before they eliminate the human race. Not so happy ending!
Now for countries like Morocco, a lot is yet to be done to get to talk about a fourth industrial revolution with all its different parts and elements.
It is inevitable that this fourth revolution is going to be everywhere, fast and affective. However in Morocco likes, politics, economics, media and laws are supposed to be in better understanding with technology and artificial intelligence. The youths are getting more familiar with new concepts and they are in a position to accept the fourth industrial revolution, a revolution that is already starting to affect parts of the world, now the turn is ours to take part in it.
Written by: Fatima Zahra El Hafa & Latifa Bella
