In 1937, John Steinbeck published his novel, Of Mice and Men, telling the story of two migrant workers during the great depression. Now, almost 80 years later, there is a growing fear of an unprecedented depression and a fear that humans will soon be under threat from Robots.
“The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” observed H.P. Lovecraft, certainly one of the all time great specialists of fear. So, let’s try to know more about this threat. Hopefully, it will reduce the fear and help us better prepare for the consequences of the revolution underway.
Revolution? That’s the word used everywhere to describe what is happening. Now is the beginning of the 4th industrial revolution. Let’s take a look at the history of industrial revolutions and how they impacted mankind.
The first industrial revolution came with the steam engine. Progressively, from 1780 to 1850, small workshops were replaced by factories, coal became the dominant source of energy and horses were replaced by steam machines. This first revolution was much more threatening to horses than it was to humans!
The second industrial revolution from 1880 to 1950, came with petrol and electricity (produced with coal and petrol) as the main energy sources. This was the era of productivity gains. The Ford T factory remains the icon of this second revolution. Workers started to earn enough salary to become consumers. Mass production for mass consumption. This appeared as a non-threatening revolution for humans. In fact, after 2 revolutions, people were richer. They were also more urban. However, our planet started to suffer. The first virulent denunciations of the waste of natural resources of our industrial society started to appear at the beginning of the 20th century.
While all historians agree on the first and second revolutions, the description of the third and fourth vary. Some authors are describing what is underway as the third industrial revolution, some are calling it the fourth. I believe that it makes sense to separate two phases so I’ll stick with the third and fourth separation.
The third is already about robotics. The very first industrial robot made its debut in 1961, at a GM factory. The Auto industry, once again, was pioneering new manufacturing technologies. These robots were dumb. They were able to do one task under the control of a simple program running on a very basic microprocessor. The aim was to outsource painful or dangerous tasks to machines and keep humans safe and healthy. That’s the way it was perceived and this (r)evolution was easily accepted. That’s pretty much where the world is right now.
The fourth industrial revolution, which just started, is about smart robots. What some call cyber-physical systems, or Industrial IoT. It is also about sustainable energy sources and protection of the environment. It is much more complex from an ethical point of view and, of course, from a social point of view.
While a vast majority of people are in favour of robots assisting them for painful or dangerous tasks, they are very much against robots taking care of kids or elderly people and they have great reservations about robots performing surgeries, for example. For the first time, machines are not there to replace horses or assist humans. They are clearly positioned as replacement for humans, including for safe, clean and even qualified tasks.
What most people tend to forget is that this new capability will also enable things that were not possible before. Robotisation will allow higher quality products, for example, because quality inspection done on a sampling basis will now be done 100%, at several steps in the production line. Smart data analytics and smart factories will also reduce waste. The first and second revolutions were about coal and petrol. The 4th revolution is about renewable energy and sustainability. It is striking to see that Tesla considers the factory as part of the product and put in their factories the same emphasis on innovation as they put in their cars. Again the auto industry is showing the way.
What relatively wealthy people in the occidental part of the northern hemisphere, a very small minority of the world’s population, also forget is that their societal model was based on the availability of cheap labour to take care of the tasks they did not want to perform. How long were they hoping it could last? Certainly not forever!
We can see the fourth industrial revolution as a threat. But we can also see it as an opportunity to save the planet, better share the wealth and improve the quality of life as new services become available to more people. It is also an opportunity to re-localize some activities, fight the most negative effects of globalisation and develop industries in under-industrialized regions of the world without repeating the environmentally destructive approach of the past. Industry 4.0 will enable the emergence of smaller factories, located closer to their end markets, powered by renewable energy and producing goods designed locally. Industry 4.0 may very well see the end of the “designed in California, produced in China” era. What about humans? Hopefully, they’ll have an opportunity to live in a “designed and produced near you” era. Robots may become creative and marketing savvy one day but that will have to wait for Industry 6.0, at least!
