In this blog post, we will look at the core concepts and changes in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and artificial intelligence, and consider how we should prepare for them.
“Jarvis!” In the movie “Iron Man,” the main character Tony Stark calls on the artificial intelligence “Jarvis” repeatedly, treating it like a real person and assigning it various tasks. “Jarvis” in the movie is a high-performance AI that recognizes and responds to voice and handles tasks. Many people became interested in “artificial intelligence” through these films or “AlphaGo,” which became an issue in 2016, and they have high expectations for the “fourth industrial revolution” that it will lead. In 2017, “Northstar Research” conducted a global survey on AI at the request of “ARM.” As a result, 61% of respondents expected that AI or automation would lead society in a positive direction, while 22% were concerned that it would lead society in a negative direction. In addition, when asked “What are you afraid of about AI?”, 57% agreed that AI is becoming more intelligent, and 63% agreed that AI cannot be trusted overall. As such, people are entering the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with many expectations and concerns about artificial intelligence and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. For those living in this society, I would like to talk about the concept and characteristics of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the artificial intelligence (AI) technology that is the key keyword of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The World Economic Forum, held in Davos on January 20, 2016, was held under the theme of “Understanding the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” and the concept of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” was first mentioned. The World Economic Forum defined the Fourth Industrial Revolution as follows. “The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a technological revolution that fuses the boundaries of digital, bio, and physics industries based on the Third Industrial Revolution.” In other words, the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ is not something new different from the technologies of the past, but an extension of the ‘Third Industrial Revolution.’ The ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ is an extension of the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’ based on IT technology, but it is different from the previous industrial revolutions. The second and third industrial revolutions were processes of automation and enhanced connectivity using electrical and information technologies. In contrast, the “fourth industrial revolution” involves the advent of “artificial intelligence,” which will replace the human brain. At the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab said that the “fourth industrial revolution” is expected to be a turning point that will bring about many economic and social changes. As of 2024, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is rapidly progressing around the world, and countries are establishing policies and strategies to respond to it. In particular, South Korea is making various efforts to strengthen its competitiveness in core technology areas such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing, and to promote digital transformation.
As mentioned earlier, the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is based on the “Third Industrial Revolution,” so the development of information and communication technology is a necessary condition. In addition, the key words of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are “convergence” and “connection.” The development of information and communication technology (IT) has made it possible for the world to communicate more freely than ever before. And technologies that have developed individually, such as information and communication technology and nanotechnology, have been able to smoothly converge with the Internet of Things. Therefore, the connections and convergence taking place in various industries, such as the manufacturing and bio industries, can create new added value. This “fourth industrial revolution,” which may seem a bit stiff and distant, is not so far from our lives, nor is it a story of the future that has yet to come. The “fourth industrial revolution” is continuing to develop and is being revealed in our lives.
Let’s take a recent issue as an example. Recently, the Kakao AI speaker has been gaining popularity in the Korean IT industry. Even an AI speaker that may seem trivial like this can accumulate and analyze activity data such as what the user is curious about, what kind of music they like, and when they use it. In addition, the data can be processed and used in the consumer, labor, and art markets to better understand and apply consumer characteristics. The characteristics of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” can be described as “hyperconnectivity,” “hyperintelligence,” and “predictability.” By connecting people, objects, and individual objects to the Internet, it is possible to analyze vast amounts of data through “hyperconnectivity” to identify certain patterns and “predict” people’s behavior through such “hyperintelligence.” Through this process, companies in the consumer market can more actively reflect the needs of consumers than ever before. The ability to create new value with a large amount of data is a characteristic of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. One example of “artificial intelligence technology” is the technology that processes and analyzes a large amount of accumulated data to predict what will happen in the future. Some people misunderstand that “artificial intelligence” only refers to robots that think like humans, such as AlphaGo and Jarvis. And they think that such artificial intelligence robots will dominate people and negatively perceive artificial intelligence. So what exactly does “artificial intelligence technology” mean?
The field of artificial intelligence was established when the term “AI,” proposed by then-university professor John McCarthy, was adopted at the Dartmouth Conference held in 1956. At the time, Professor John McCarthy said, “AI is the science and engineering of creating intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.” However, since artificial intelligence is based on a vast amount of data, many people at the time were not very interested in AI. But for us, who are living in a society flooded with information, AI has become the driving force behind the “fourth industrial revolution.” In this way, artificial intelligence is not a single technology like communication technology or nanotechnology, but a general term for the field of studying intelligent programs.
So far, we have learned about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and artificial intelligence and considered their relationship. This will be of great help to us as we prepare for the coming era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What the future will be like with artificial intelligence may differ from one scholar to another and from one person to another. However, I hope that this article will dispel any misunderstandings you may have about the future with artificial intelligence and broaden your perspective on the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“The future cannot be predicted, but the future can be invented.”
As Alvin Toffler said, we should not just passively follow the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and artificial intelligence, but actively pioneer it.
