advertisement
Implantable mobile phones. 3D-printed organs for transplant. Clothes and reading glasses connected to the Internet. Such things may be science fiction today but they will be scientific fact by 2025 as the world enters an era of advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and gene editing, according to executives surveyed by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Nearly half of those questioned about it also expect an artificial intelligence machine to be sitting on a corporate board of directors within the next decade. Welcome to the next industrial revolution.
After steam, mass production and information technology, the so-called “fourth industrial revolution” will bring ever faster cycles of innovation, posing huge challenges to companies, workers, governments and societies alike.
The promise is of cheaper goods and services, driving a new wave of economic growth. The threat is mass unemployment and a further breakdown of already strained trust between corporations and populations.
Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, told the WEF’s annual meeting on Wednesday:
Robots are already on the march, moving from factories into homes, hospitals, shops, restaurants and even war zones, while advances in areas like artificial neural networks are starting to blur the barriers between man and machine.
One of the most in-demand participants in Davos this year was not a central banker, CEO or politician but a prize-winning South Korean robot called HUBO, which was strutting amid a crowd of smartphone-clicking delegates.
But there are deep worries, as well as awe, at what technology can do. A new report from UBS released in Davos predicts that extreme levels of automation and connectivity will worsen the already deepening inequalities. It will widen the wealth gap between the developed and developing economies.
An analysis of major economies by the Swiss bank concluded that Switzerland is the country best placed to adapt to the new robot world while Argentina ranks at the bottom.
There will be winners and losers among companies, too, as new players move into established industries with disruptive new technologies. That is what has been in the minds of Davos attendees such as CEO of General Motors Mary Barra, who is confronting the threat of driverless cars. This is another science fiction that has become science fact. Bank boss Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, has been facing competition from digital “fintech” start-ups. Such innovations, coupled with the rise of robots in both the manufacturing and service sectors, could automate a vast numbers of jobs.
Oxford University researchers predicted in 2013, for example, that 47 percent of the jobs in US were at risk. Such fears about technology destroying jobs are not new. The economist John Maynard Keynes famously cried wolf in 1931, by issuing a warning of widespread “technological unemployment”.
The question is whether this time will be different, given the speed to change and the fact that machines now offer brain as well as brawn, threatening professions previously seen as immune, such as entry-level journalism or routine financial analysis.
Pessimists fear this will hollow out middle-income and middle-class jobs on an unprecedented scale, with the WEF itself predicting that more than 5 million jobs could be lost in 15 major economies by 2020.
But CEO of ManpowerGroup Jonas Prising is more upbeat for the long term.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)