Technological innovations are boosting the transformation of the global economy and society, as the 46th World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting is being held under the theme “Mastering the 4th Industrial Revolution” in Davos, Switzerland.
A robot named Hubo, which can replace people to conduct search and rescue work in disaster-stricken areas, caught much attention at the Davos forum. A report of the forum forecast that the rise of robots and artificial intelligence will overset the traditional labor market in the coming five years, leading to 5.1 million jobs to be cut.
“You don’t see it in front of the camera so much. It’s the gradual work to remove the boring parts of the white collar work. It’s a very hot topic,” said Andrew W. Moore, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Development of new technologies like robots, pilotless automobiles and 3D printing are affecting various aspects of people’s life.
“It matters to everyone, and everybody should be interested in the question of the fourth Industrial Revolution. It may on the one hand lead to remarkable progress and new opportunities as major developments are merged. Let’s say big data. With bio sequencing we can have consequences we were not even able to think about. Automation, for instance, will take away much of the need for cheap labor,” said Espen Barth Eide, managing director at WEF.
WEF Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab pointed in his new book “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” that the Revolution may bring a series of dangers like the expanding gap between the rich and the poor and worsening social inequality.
“Innovation brings a series of social problems, for example the moral and ethical problem. If we have robots with thinking abilities, the robots can fall in love, then how do we handle this problem? And the cyber attacking problem, the biochemical problem, and what changes will the repair of cells bring to genes and ethic itself? This may lead to another problem of information privatization and global cooperation, because the biochemical problem, once it appears, will exert an global effect,” said Zhu Min, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). (CCTV/Reuters)
