Mar 23 2018 – Terry Bell
It is rather worrying that so many of the arguments about the fourth industrial revolution are so simplistic and often crude.
This is especially so, given the amount of readily available information and analysis. As a result, the major problem facing the global community because of the rapid development and introduction of new technologies is, for the most part, seldom debated.
It is a problem that was summed up clearly in 1949 by the “father of cybernetics”, the mathematician Norbert Wiener. With computing and automation becoming talking points, he looked to the future and noted that it would be possible to “live a good life with the aid of the machines”.
These, he pointed out, could ultimately carry out most labour more efficiently and effectively than humans can. But Wiener went on to warn that the same machines could usher in “an industrial revolution of unmitigated cruelty”. He added: “These new machines have a great capacity for upsetting the present basis of industry, and of reducing the economic value of the routine factory employee to a point at which he is not worth hiring at any price.”
Wiener was not alone in assessments of this kind, but, like others, he was largely ignored. Even today, with the exponential growth of artificial intelligence, with self-drive vehicles already a reality and with robots dispensing financial advice (in 19 languages) in Japanese banks, there is widespread denial of what this reality means. The tiny minority who control most of the world’s productive capital, along with the governments that manage branches of our global system, are clearly at a loss.
Read more at https://www.fin24.com/Economy/Labour/InsideLabour/inside-labour-the-real-question-about-the-4th-industrial-revolution-20180323#cxrecs_s