If the first industrial revolution was the mechanization of production using water and steam power, followed by the second which introduced mass production with the help of electric power, then the third is what we are currently experiencing: the digital revolution and the use of electronics and IT to further automate production.
The fourth industrial revolution, which is sometimes referred to as Industry 4.0, is the vision of the ‘smart factory’, where cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralized decisions.
These cyber-physical systems communicate andcooperate with each other and humans in real time over the Internet of Things.
When Artificial Intelligence emerged in the late 1950s the world was just beginning to computerize, and there was no Internet; so we could consider that period as “Hero’s Alexandria for AI“.
Scalability of software became possible with the proliferation of cloud
computing in the early 2010s, and the advent of software development platforms.
Artificial Intelligence is now fast becoming a software platform too,
infinitely scalable on the cloud. For example, IBM Watson is now available
through a number of APIs that software developers can integrate to their
applications. It is only a matter of time before technologies such as deep
machine learning will also become scalable, a trend that can only accelerate as
more “things” become connected to the Internet producing more data. Robots are
also transforming into platforms. Tesla cars are upgraded not by taking them to
a human mechanic but by downloading software. One day soon we will be able to
upgrade our driverless cars, as well as our household robots, via our smartphones,
which can already tap on back-end supercomputing-grade power from the cloud
Anything that’s working on an AI-basedsystem is bound to be very vulnerable to the replacement by AI as it’s easily automated already. However, while AI developments in the retail space could lead to the replacement of jobs, it is also rather promising at the same time.
Mark Bishop, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, highlighted that AI could save businesses money if it becomes smart enough to determine price variants in company spending, for example,
scanning through years of an organization’s invoice database and detecting the
cheapest costs and thus saving on outgoings. While some worry that AI will take over jobs, others have said that they will replace humans altogether.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak added toprevious comments from Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk with claims that”computers are going to take over from humans”.
Wozniak made his feelings on AI known during an interview with the Australian Financial Review, and agreed with Hawking and Musk that its potential to surpass humans is worrying.
“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question. Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people,”