4th Industrial Revolution: ARE WE FACING APOCALYPSE?
The fourth
industrial revolution will bring out intelligent robots, self-driving car, 3D
printing, huge storage capacity, but also hyper connectivity and robotisation.
It is going to make some changes on our behaviour and also on the way of
distribution, consumption, access to information, on how we meet people and how
we work. But how the labour market will deal with automatization?
First of
all, let’s take a look at our past progress in matter of industrial revolutions:
From the 18th
to 19th century, the first industrial revolution took place in
Europe, and so in the United Kingdom. Water and steam power were used to
mechanized production.
The second
occurred in 1850 from the United States and ended in 1914, just before World
War I. It was the period of the use of electric power to create mass production, and also of new resources as petroleum.
The
third industrial revolution, or digital revolution, refers to the advancement
of technology such as automatized production, the internet and information and
communications technology. The era started during the 1980s and is still
ongoing.
What about hyper connectivity and artificial intelligence?
We are already a hyper connected generation.
Every day, around 30 million contains is shared on social medias as Facebook.
Every minute 4 million searches on google are identified and at least 72 hours
of video are downloaded on YouTube. Electronic machines are increasing in
becoming interconnected: in fact, they were 13 million in 2015 and will be around
3 times more in 2018. We also receive far too many mails that are just spam
(80% of them). There are other statistics more displeased and frighten: for
example, every minute, 345 threats of cyber-attacks are registered which the
half aims at energy companies.
Nowadays, the collective thought idealises the
4th industrial revolution. Maybe we will live surrounded by robots
at least almost intelligent as us or we will just be their slaves. A war will
maybe profiled against the robot’s independency. Those popular questions about
our future lives on the side of robots are being threatened by science fiction
authors and producers through some popular movies as I Robot, Artificial
Intelligence or Ex Machina.
And what about the 4th industrial revolution's economy?
From a
realistic point of view, the society of the 4th industrial
revolution will give rise to automatization. It is true that for about a
decade, robots are replacing workers in factories but other sectors will be
seriously affected over time. In fact, according to the World Economic Research
Forum, 5 millions of jobs will be already displaced by automatization in 2020. And
this time, employees will be really concerned. It also means that for qualified
people, a net increase will result in safe and more rewarding jobs. This will
probably lead to a labour market more separated between the
“low-skilled/low-pay” and the “high-skill/high-pay” people, which is already a source
of some social tensions.
Dear
women, we will finally find a gender equality… IN THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE! In
fact, the impact is probably going to be relatively equal between men and
women: in a few years, 52% of the 5 millions of jobs lost will concern men and
48% women. But unfortunately, nowadays, women seem to be less important than
men in the labour market so the gap between men and women could still increase.
An Alarming funding! In my opinion, if governments do not find an answer quickly and targeted to
this short-term transition to build a skilled labour force or to reintegrate
the “displaced workers” at the economy centre, they will be confronted to
rising unemployment and greater inequalities.
Bibliography:
http://enseigner.tv5monde.com/fle/la-quatrieme-revolution-industrielle
https://www.google.fr/amp/amp.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond
Written by Mouloudi Sonia
Reviewed by Bel Kanadil Maïssane
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