In a recent publication on Future of Work, The Economist has sparked a note of alarm saying, "The effect of today's technology on tomorrow's jobs will be immense-and no country is ready for it." A series of articles have been published across the world depicting the fear from technology. In one extreme, the concern is about the accumulation of monopolistic market power by taking advantage of technology. In another, it is the concern of major unemployment threat due to the emergence of the opportunity of reducing the role of humans in production systems-for producing better quality goods at lower cost.
Manifestation of this is human-free production factories-termed Industry 4.0, which basically stands for cyber physical system having sensing, perceiving and reasoning capabilities. But just a century ago, new technologies and innovative management techniques following the principles of capitalism powered the growth of America by sharply reducing the price of basic commodities, sometimes by as much as 90 per cent, as has been noted by Richard White in a recent Oxford University Press publication. Despite the role of technology and capitalism shaping America making it role model for the rest of the world to imitate, why are we now scared with its continued progression?
Technology and capitalism are closely linked with each other. Technology creates profitable possibilities of offering better quality goods at lower cost. It is capitalism which fosters competition of taking entrepreneurial initiatives to take advantage of that opportunity. As a result, both consumer and producer surpluses surge-increasing the total wealth of the society. In absence of capitalism, technology progression alone does not encourage competition to offer better quality products at lower price to increase profit. On the other hand, in the absence of profitable opportunity, human brains do not spontaneously respond to new ideas of technology development and innovation. Entrepreneurs are not willing to risk investment to nurture those ideas. Despite having many chilling concerns of monopolisation and mass unemployment threat due to progression towards human-free production, let's look into such progression through the lenses of selected development challenges.
Hunger-Free World: According to the estimation of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, "About 795 million of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2014-2016."Among these hungry people, 780 million, live in developing countries. If food production remains unchanged, with the growth of total population reaching 9.5 billion 2050, the size of hungry population is bound to rise. On the other hand, according to a study finding reported in The Guardian, the world has lost a third of its arable land primarily due to erosion, settlement, fertility loss, or pollution in the past 40 years. To address these conflicting forces, technology is the only option. Technology having the capability of sensing, perceiving, reasoning and taking action, commonly known as cyber physical systems or Industry 4.0, is crucial for precise decision making and input dose determination, and also to discharge inputs in a precise manner. Replacement of humans in food production with cyber physical system has become a crucially important to address this daunting challenge. Research shows that current state of technology alone is able to reduce the farming inputs as high as 25 per cent without sacrificing the output.
Pollution Free Sustainable Energy: Fossil and nuclear fuel-based energy production causes pollution; and it is also unsustainable. According to an intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC), "the largest growth in global green house gas (GHG) emission between 1970 and 2004 has come from the energy supply sector (an increase of 145 per cent)". Despite the possibility of renewable energy sources, intermittence and their micro sizes are barriers to grow as strong substitute to conventional energy supply. The battery technology is opening the opportunity to be the reservoir of energy from intermittent micro sources and supply them to consumers as and when needed. But to materialise this possibility, we need human free highly autonomous smart systems. In the absence of the progression of technology fueling Industry 4.0, we cannot materialise the dream of having sustainable pollution-free energy supply for the world. Moreover, such development also opens the opportunity for the developing world to be energy-sufficient, whether harnessing energy from sun, wind, water or biomass burning clay stoves.
Clean, Accident-Free Transportation: Transportation is one of the key building blocks of the modern society. But transportation is also the major cause of accidents and pollution. According to IPCC, transportation was the source of 14 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. Road accidents, primarily caused by human driving errors, cause significant loss to life and materials. According to the Times of India, in India alone "nearly one hundred fifty thousand people were killed in accidents last year compared to one hundred forty six thousand in 2015." India also suffers from 3 per cent GDP loss from road accidents. To improve the situation, one of the major options is to increase the role of cyber physical systems in the transportation systems. The bits and pieces of development of autonomous cars or electric vehicles are indication that we are progressing to make our transportation system clean as well as accident-free-by removing human roles.
Caring world for Elderly: With decreasing birth rate and increasing life expectancy, the density of elderly population has been increasing, reaching 8.5 per cent. It is expected that number of people aged over 65 will jump to nearly 17 per cent of the world's population by 2050 (1.6 billion). Who will look after them? Cyber physical systems can free working hours of youths and also connect youths over the Internet to machines to offer elderly care services as and when needed. Some of the developments of nursing robotics, which are taking place primarily in Japan, are early signals of such progression.
Living with Nature: One of the liabilities of industrial age is city-centric life. Cyber physical system is opening the opportunity to connect people from anywhere of the world to production mechanism across the world. As a result, people will be relieved from the menace of living in over-crowded cities.
WasteAGE-Free Production: With the growing roles taken from human workers by cyber physical systems, factories will be producing less wastage. For example, replacement of human inspectors by machine vision systems in textile inspection alone has the potential to reduce fabric wastage by as high as 10 per cent. Similarly, replacement of human food processors by robots has the potential to have contamination-free processed food.
It appears that Industry 4.0 is a blessing for humanity to address major development challenges. But to benefit from such potential, we need to strengthen competition force by opening opportunities of technological development and innovation for profitable gains. Instead of being scared, we should welcome the technologies and adoption of cyber physical systems in all spheres of our lives. To make this blessing equitable for all, we need to have smarter policies and regulations.
Rokonuzzaman Ph.D, academic, researcher and activist on Technology, Innovation and Policy, is Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North South University, Bangladesh.
