The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Beneficial or Harmful to All Aspects of Life

You are now living on the brink of today’s revolution. Can this be beneficial or harmful to all aspects of life?

The world is now facing the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) that will fundamentally change people’s life. It is characterized by a range of new technologies that are having an impact on all disciplines, economies, and industries.

The fourth industrial revolution covers wide-ranging fields such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, 3D printing, nanotechnology, energy savings, computing, etc. What could be its advantages and disadvantages?

The advantages of 4IR are the following: higher productivity, destroying current jobs and creating new ones, and manual work is replaced by knowledge.

Higher productivity

The 4IR carries out continuous optimization of production. That means companies were already finding ways how to produce more with fewer resources in order to have higher productivity on their part.

Destroying current jobs and creating new ones

The 4IR replaces older jobs with a new, more advanced, knowledgeable, more sophisticated jobs. This can generate opportunities for those who are looking for jobs.

Manual work is replaced by knowledge

The challenge of 4IR is on how companies can motivate their knowledge workers to release their human potential instead of manual work.

The disadvantages of 4IR are the following: greater inequality and disruption of labor markets, cybersecurity, hacking, risk assessment, impact on core industries and sectors, and manipulation and ethical issues.

Greater inequality and disruption of labor markets

This is the scarcest and most valuable resource in an era driven by digital technologies as this will be those people who can create new ideas and innovations and not on either ordinary labor or ordinary capital.

People with ideas will be the scarcest resource instead of not workers or investors. This increased dichotomization (the process of dividing into two parts, classes, or groups) can lead to an increase in social tensions.

Cybersecurity, hacking, risk assessment

Privacy will be the main issue in the 4IR as human lives will become extensively connected to various devices, from cell phones, cars, and light switches to home security cameras, and smart speakers.

Impact on core industries and sectors

This is is more than just technology-driven change as disruptive innovation also reshapes how businesses operate, new markets are created and new products are made.

Manipulation and ethical issues

This era will feature AI (artificial intelligence), automation, robots, and genetic engineering. On this era, robots will become smarter and more autonomous, yet they’re still lacking in the capacity of moral reasoning.

According to a study, this may affect society and the economy in a variety of ways:

first, a large portion of people around the world are likely to use social-media platforms to connect, learn, and change information;
second, a variety of innovative producers and competitors will have easy access to digital platforms of marketing, sales, and distribution, thereby improving the quality and price of goods and services; and
third, consumers will be more and more involved in the production and distribution chains.

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