The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Downfall or Uptrend for Humanity?
Why this time is entirely different from previous three industrial revolutions?
In the Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, astronauts are conducted on a covert operation, their ship’s computer system, HAL, starts to exhibit increasingly strange behavior, leading up to a worried conflict between man and machine that ends with a complicated journey within space and time. The plot of the movie was very compelling and also creepy for those who concerned with the possible ascent of Artificial Intelligence at that time. The movie was considered as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made by many critics, although, fortunately, incidents in this movie did not occur since the releasing of the movie. However, the hazardous sides of AI are not clipped by various pundits. The genius entrepreneur Elon Musk, notable public intellectual and linguist Noam Chomsky, and physicist Stephen Hawking underlined AI as “our biggest existential threat.”
The rise of Artificial Intelligence is one of the contentious topics following the World War II. Many argued that the irresistible surge of AI will diminish human civilization in the very soon time. However, both AI and information revolution are just replaced prior industrial revolutions. In the first industrial revolution water and steam power to mechanize production destroyed millions of jobs and pushed crowds of unemployed harvesters into cities in search of factory work. Then in the second industrial revolution, mechanization and globalization forced workers out of the manufacturing sector and into new service jobs. The Third one was electronics and information technology that automate production in the numerous industries. Fourth Industrial Revolution is the continuous type of the Third, the digital revolution that has been happening since the 1990s, and it was acknowledged as a fusion between the technology and the physical, digital, and biological fields.
Automation as Job-Stealers
While robotics and innovative self-service technologies are increasingly implemented throughout virtually each segment of the economy, they will principally threaten lower-wage employments that demand modest levels of education and training. These employments conversely and presently prepare the vast majority of the new positions being engendered by the economy. Many economists and politicians might be persuaded to ignore this as a problem. After all, repetitive, low-wage, low-skill jobs incline to be regarded as naturally unfavorable, and you are quite likely to meet the axiom well-known as “freed up”. It means that workers who misplace their low-skill jobs will be freed up to chase more training and better jobs. The crucial assumption is that a vigorous economy similar the United States or Germany will constantly be able of generating sufficient higher-wage, higher-skill jobs to captivate all those freshly freed up workers.
This Time is Different?
Hence, why this time is entirely different from previous three industrial revolutions? In the past, mechanization has preferred to be comparatively specialized and when it disrupted one employment sector in one go, workers moving to a new emerging industry. Nonetheless, conditions currently are quite different. The impact of information technology will occur all-encompassing. Practically every industry is likely to become less labor-intensive as new technology is integrated into business models and that transition could occur entirely fast. Temporary unemployment has been often a problem during these transitions, but it never became systemic or perpetual. In the previous revolutions, the process is like that jobs were destroyed by destructive innovation, and then new jobs were created in different business areas, and dispossessed workers found new opportunities in the renewed business areas. Undeniably, among consultants of economics and finance, there is frequently a virtually instinctive tendency to ignore anyone who claims that this time might be different. This is very expected the definite instinct when some are discussing those aspects of the economy that are predominantly driven by human behavior and market psychology. The psychological foundations of the recent housing bubble and bust were undoubtedly weak distinguishing from those that have categorized financial crises throughout history. However, as we have seen above information technology is profoundly different from prior technological and mechanical revolutions. IT has an exceptional capability to scale machine intelligence through organizations in schemes that will substitute for workers and its propensity to universally produce winner-take-all circumstances will have dramatic consequences on behalf of both the economy and society.The growth of advanced AI will require massive investment in research and development. Still, long before such sincerely innovative technologies befit more practical, more specialized forms of AI and robotics are probably threatening enormous numbers of jobs at a range of skill levels. That could ruin the market demand and, therefore, the motivation for advance investment in innovation.
The Role of Big Data
Fourth Industrial Revolution has resulted in many consequences for IT-based business areas, but earlier developments in those areas have involved adding more elasticity and individualization to business processes with the function of big data. The new industrial automation equipment is increasingly integrating with factories that are gaining the ability to gather sufficient data. The experience of big data and the need to apply new automation equipment, companies are probably to implement changes gradually over time. These improvements will give organizations opportunity to develop know-how in running and analyzing large amounts of data. In some sense, the trend of companies using technology to add elasticity to industrial processes has continued for many years. Companies gradually have been boosting supplementary communications and data-collecting technology to their activities. These trends are likely to gain momentum in the coming years with the smooth transition into the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
What Awaits Us
Optimist advocates of the Fourth Industrial Revolution consider that acceleration of information technology and automation are regarded as significant influence whose exponential progress will almost undoubtedly save us from any dangers that lie ahead. Beyond the United States and other emerged countries, conditions may be far more severe for the emerging world. As we have seen above, employment opportunities are disappearing throughout the world. Labor-intensive business as a path to prosperity may begin to disappear for many emerging nations even as more efficient farming methods inevitably drive people away from agricultural lifestyles. Many of these countries will face far more severe impacts from climate change and are already subject to substantial environmental loss. The ultimate risk is that we could face that a situation where technological unemployment and the environmental impact develop jointly as a counterpart, and these factors are encouraging and possibly even intensifying each other. However, we can fairly accelerate advancing technology as a solution, if we recognize and adapt its implications for employment and the distribution of income. The outcome of the information revolution will probably to be far more optimistic about the future.
