The Fourth Industrial Revolution & Artificial Intelligence

The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production – mainly supporting the agricultural economy. The Second utilised electric power to create mass production in which factories flourished. The Third focused on electronic and Information Technology (IT) to automate production. 

Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third - namely the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is mainly characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be further multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence (A.I), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.

Touching Our Everyday Lives

AI, is an example of the emerging technology which is synonymous with the 4th Industrial Revolution. It has evolved from the obscure to the mainstream. It has touched our everyday lives, even without us knowing it. A.I is not just restricted to the building of autonomous or self-driven cars or Augmented Reality, but has been rather synonymous tour everyday lives.

Consumers are touched by AI every day. Did you know that when you hold your Smartphone, AI tech is already embedded in it? Ordering a cab, booking a flight, buying a product, making a payment, listening to music, watching a film, or playing a game—any of these can now be done in the comfort and ease of wherever we are. 

When Google Photos groups images of people using facial recognition, it deploys the deep learning techniques of AI. Chatbots that converse with you in Yahoo, Facebook and other sites use AI. Alibaba harnesses deep learning to find a handbag matching the one in the photo you uploaded to its shopping site. Digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant use AI to provide information or execute tasks.

“Now, the focus is less on how humans complete mundane tasks faster and more on completely freeing humans from performing manual or process-oriented tasks. ”

Wearables like fitness trackers have already invaded our lives. Used mostly by fitness enthusiasts like runners, cyclists or maybe even sleep deprived executives looking to better regulate their sleep patterns.

Financial institutions for example, use A.I for fraud detection: The systems compare normal banking behaviour across billions of transactions with outlier activities and will alert the bank involved should there be fraudulent use of cards. From a marketing perspective too, AI can be applied into computing systems to better understand the needs of customers and for businesses to better fine-tune their business strategy and marketing approach in this new era. 

The Impact and Future Effects on Society

On the whole, there are a few main effects that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has on business—on customer expectations, on product enhancement, on collaborative innovation, and even on organizational forms. Whether consumers or businesses, customers are increasingly at the epicenter of the economy, which is all about improving how customers are served. 

Physical products and services, moreover, can now be enhanced with digital capabilities that increase their value. New technologies make assets more durable and resilient, while data and analytics are transforming how they are maintained. A world of customer experiences, data-based services, and asset performance through analytics, meanwhile, requires new forms of collaboration, particularly given the speed at which innovation and disruption are taking place. And the emergence of global platforms and other new business models, finally, means that talent, culture, and organizational forms will have to be rethought.

Now, the focus is less on how humans complete mundane tasks faster and more on completely freeing humans from performing manual or process-oriented tasks. Artificial intelligence’s part in this will be to free workers from large-scale intellectual tasks defined by gathering, analyzing and acting on massive amounts of data. This will raise the barrier to intellectual entry in the workforce but also elevate workers to operate at a higher, more strategic level.

Different AIs are contributing to this revolution in different ways. AIs that specialize in crunching data and offering insights are making workers smarter and able to act faster in scenarios where, in the past, they would have had to do the numbers work first. On the other hand, autonomous AIs are playing an even larger role by taking on the implementation part of that scenario.

This type of AI, left to its own devices, not only collects, interprets and reports on data, but it also adjusts its operations based on its conclusions. Humans set up initial parameters and need only step in when there is a significant shift in business rules.

Conclusion

All in all, A.I is no longer exotic and rare. 

It has become increasingly part of our personal and professional lives. And it has begun to reshape markets. According to the World Economic Forum, artificial intelligence is ushering in the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” -- the first major workplace transformation to focus on streamlining intellectual labour in addition to manual labour. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway and definitely here to stay. 

But the real revolution will not occur with the introduction of these technologies into the workplace; it will happen when workers understand that AI systems are less like tools than they are like potential co-collaborators. And that all parties can derive benefits and expand their opportunities for growth.