This year, the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos had as its main theme “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution”
The fourth industrial revolution, which integrates fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, genetics, biotechnology…, will bring about the widespread transformation not only of business models, but also of labor markets over the next five years; with enormous changes in the overall set of skills needed to thrive in the new landscape.
We are on the brink of a technological revolution that will profoundly alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. In its scale, scope and complexity, the transformation will be utterly disruptive. And although we do not yet know exactly how it will unfold, we do already know that the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all the actors of global politics, the public and private sectors as well as civil society.
We are on the brink of a technological revolution that will profoundly alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. In its scale, scope and complexity, the transformation will be utterly disruptive
The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second Revolution brought electric power to create mass production. The Third Revolution brought computing and information technology to automate production. Now, a Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is being built upon the Digital Revolution, is characterized by the fusion of technologies across three different spheres: physical, digital and biological.
The speed, scope and impact of these systems will produce an impact without historical precedent:
- The speed of the advances is evolving exponentially rather than at a linear pace.
- It is disrupting almost every industry in every country (scope).
- The breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management and governance (breadth).
The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by new technological innovations in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.
Already, artificial intelligence is all around us, from driverless cars to planes flown by virtual assistants or software that translates. And impressive progress has been made in AI in recent years, driven by the exponential increase in computing power and by the availability of vast amounts of data: from the software used to discover new drugs to the algorithms used to predict our cultural interests.
Additionally, there are digital fabrication technologies that are interacting with the biological world. Engineers, designers and architects are combining computational design, materials engineering and synthetic biology applied to our bodies, to the products we consume, and even to the buildings we inhabit.
Within five years, more than a third of the skills (35%) that are considered important in today’s workforce will have changed.
By 2020, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will already have brought us advanced robotics and autonomous transport, or artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as advanced materials with biotechnology and advances in genomics. This evolution will transform the way we live and the way we work. Some jobs will disappear, others will grow, and jobs that do not even exist today will become commonplace.
A Forum report on the future of the jobs of the future foresees that by 2020, 5 million jobs will be lost as a result of technological changes. And it analyzed the impact on industries and the key skills for 2020.
Which skills will change the most?
The top 10 skills for 2020:
- Complex problem solving
- Critical thinking
- Creativity
- People management
- Cooperation
- Emotional intelligence
- Decision making
- Service orientation
- Negotiation
- Flexibility
Creativity will become one of the top three skills workers will need. With the avalanche of new products, new technologies and new ways of working, workers will have to be more creative in order to benefit from these changes.
Robots can help us be faster, but they cannot be as creative as human beings (yet).
Emotional intelligence and service orientation, which did not appear in the 2015 top 10, will become two of the main skills needed by everyone.
The disruption of industry
The nature of the change will depend largely on the industry itself. Global media and entertainment as well as the cultural sector, for example, have already seen a great deal of change over the past five years.
The financial services and investment sector, however, has yet to be radically transformed.
Those working in sales, manufacturing and across the enterprise in general will need new skills, such as technological literacy or digital skills.
Some advances are ahead of the others: the Internet of people, the mobile Internet and cloud technology are already affecting the way we work and relate to one another. Artificial intelligence, 3D printing and advanced materials are still in the early stages of use, but the pace of change will be rapid.
Change will not wait: business leaders, educators and governments have an obligation to be proactive in upgrading their skills as well as in training their teams so that everyone can benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Challenges and opportunities
Like the revolutions that preceded it, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life of populations around the world. To date, technology has made it possible for products and services to increase their efficiency as well as the experience in our personal lives. Ordering a taxi, ordering food, booking a flight, buying a product, making a payment, listening to music, watching a film, learning or playing a game can now be done remotely.
In the future, technological innovation will also impact efficiency and productivity: Transport and communication costs will fall, logistics and global supply chains will become more effective, and the costs of trade will decrease, while new markets will open up and economic growth will be boosted.
At the same time, the revolution could produce greater inequality, particularly because of its impact on labor markets. As automation replaces labor across the entire economy, the net displacement of workers by machines will widen the gap between returns on capital and returns on labor.
On the other hand, it is also possible that the displacement of workers by technology may, on the whole, increase the number of safe and rewarding jobs.
And without doubt, in the future, talent, more than capital, will represent the critical factor of production. This will give rise to a labor market increasingly divided between “low-skill / low-pay” segments and “high-skill / high-pay” segments, which in turn will lead to an increase in social tensions. Therefore, this highly technological new environment requires strong demand at the high and low ends, but a hollowing out of the middle.
Another factor to bear in mind is the impact of job losses on women; the study foresees that it will affect women more: In terms of job losses it affects women (48%) and men (52%) equally, but the study shows that for every 5 jobs lost by women, only 1 will be created for them; whereas for every 3 jobs lost, men will gain 1.
We must work to ensure that women increase their participation in technical studies. A fact already demonstrated by the low executive leadership in the big digital and technology companies:
Michael A Osborne has estimated that 47% of jobs in the United States are at high risk of automation. And a survey conducted by the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software and Society shows that people expect artificial intelligence machines to sit on a company’s board of directors by 2026.
The impact on business
From our work as a digital partner for the digital transformation of people and organizations, we have the opportunity to see the concern of CEOs, entrepreneurs and senior executives at the acceleration of innovation and the speed of disruption of new technologies and new business models, which are difficult to understand or anticipate. Only the trained, informed and connected can act.
On the side of changes in supply, many industries are seeing the introduction of new technologies that create new ways of serving existing needs and significantly disrupt existing industry value chains. Disruption is also flowing from innovative, agile competitors who, thanks to access to global digital platforms for research, development, marketing, sales and distribution, can oust well-established traditional operators faster than ever by improving the quality, speed or price at which value is delivered. The impact, according to McKinsey, is that the weight of large corporations in global GDP will fall by 20% over the next decade.
Major changes on the demand side are also taking place, as growing transparency, consumer engagement, and the new behavior patterns of connected consumers, through social media and mobility, force companies to adapt the way they design, market and deliver products and services .
A key trend is the development of technology platforms that connect demand and supply. Collaborative economy models such as Uber, Airbnb or KickStarter, social platforms such as Instagram or Pinterest, mobile marketplaces such as wallapop, the fintech sector with Kantox, ecommerce with Amazon, or the new immediate delivery sector with JustEat or Instacart.
The great key to new business models lies in the customer experience, services based on data.
Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the Internet, mostly in developed countries. The United Nations has set the goal of connecting every inhabitant of the world to the Internet by 2020. Access to information, education and global markets will mean that many people can improve their living conditions and escape poverty. If we are able to achieve the goal of universal Internet access and overcome other barriers such as digital illiteracy, everyone could have access to knowledge, and all the possibilities that this entails.
In short, it all comes down to people and values. We have to shape a future that works for all of us by putting people and their empowerment at the center.
In its most pessimistic form, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is connected with robotics, highlights the risk of the unknowns posed by the Human-Robot relationship as well as the use of Artificial Intelligence. But robotics can be not only a great complement to the best parts of human nature, creativity, empathy… it can also help humanity towards a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny. It is the responsibility of all of us to make sure the latter sense prevails.
originally published on mujeresconsejeras by
JOANA SÁNCHEZ – President and founder of Íncipy
