What is the Fourth (and Fifth) Industrial Revolution?

Part 2: The Magic of Exponential Growth!

In the previous part of the story, we saw how industrial revolutions bring unprecedented economic enrichment. Unless we can guarantee enrichment of a similar magnitude, we should not call a bunch of innovations a revolution! We also saw that the new ideas around liberalism were the ones that enabled industrial revolutions. Ideas like equality and the fall of traditional birth-based hierarchies, the emergence of democracy, the growing belief that science can solve real challenges, and the rapid increase in the number of consumers (caused by economic enrichment) and innovators (caused by the democratisation of access to knowledge).

In this part of the story, we shall take a deep dive to understand what is causing the avalanche of technological innovations which is sometimes called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0 or 4IR) and how we need to keep the ideas of liberalism metamorphosing into something bigger to make sure that 4IR actually brings forth the kind of enrichment brought by the previous IRs.

The Story of Chess and Wheat

Many of us might have read some version of the story about the person who invented the game of chess being granted an award by the king. The smart man wanted a grain of wheat on the first day, two on the second, four on the third and so on for 64 days (one per each square on the chess board). The king laughed at this and said yes. But, by the end of just a few weeks, the king’s granaries were empty! To put things in perspective, on the entire chessboard there would be 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains of wheat, which would weigh around 1.2 billion tons. In 2022, the global wheat production is 760 million tons!

This kind of increase is called exponential increase. The human mind is not capable of comprehending the implications of exponential growth. Something similar is happening in the domain of knowledge!

In 1981, Buckminister Fuller suggested that human knowledge in the 1980s was doubling every 12–13 months. Some recent reports from industries suggest that this has sped up to less than a month. Even if we go with Fuller’s numbers from the 1980s, does that remind you of something? When things double (like the number of wheat grains) at fixed intervals, it may look pretty OK to start with. But, very soon things tend to go completely wild! Why? Let us look at two cases using some plots below. The blue plot shows the number of wheat grains the king would have to give if he were to give grains ten times the number of days, i.e. 10 grains one day, 20 the next, 30 the following day, etc. (linear increase). The yellow curve shows the number of grains he would need to give if the number doubles every day (exponential increase). You can see that for the first few days the two curves overlap. Hence, to start with we are misled to underestimate an exponential curve!

Now, let us look at the effect of knowledge growing at an exponential rate. The figure below shows the number of utility patents granted per year in the USA since 1840. Does the curve resemble the blue curve or the yellow curve above? This shows how the rate of innovation has been growing at an exponential pace. The interesting thing is that the real effect of this exponential nature has only become apparent since early 2000.

Industry 4.0: A Story of Accelerated Incremental Innovations

Economic experts tend to give examples of a few domains (like artificial intelligence (AI) or genetic engineering) when they talk about the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR or Industry 4.0). Let us make it very clear. 4IR is not about any particular domain. It is the time when the effect of the exponential increase in knowledge and innovations becomes apparent by an avalanche of progress and innovations in many domains (starting from agriculture to AI to genetic engineering to blockchain). Unlike the previous IRs, this time it is NOT about one particular leap in technological development. It is not about one or two big disruptive innovations. It is about a flood of a massive number of incremental innovations that pushes every frontier of human development and makes it almost impossible for anyone to keep track of the phenomena!

Irrespective of the reason, the result is this wave after wave of “interesting” innovations which even researchers are unable to keep track of. The question we should ask is what would be the impacts? Are we ready for them? Rather, can we be ready for them?

Let us be reminded that humans are incapable of grasping the impact of exponential growth. Hence, I shall refrain from predicting the impacts of this new technological revolution. We can agree on one thing. We would very much like this technological revolution to turn into an industrial revolution and thereby create another wave of enrichment. Can liberalism or a flavour of that be the charm to enable this? Let us look at a few touchy aspects of 4IR.

• Exponential growth in knowledge gives rise to the impossibility of having generalists. This will create isolated silos of knowledge. This will create losses in communication when innovators, bankers, administrators, etc. try to interact and understand each other. How do we make sure that we train/retrain enough generalists?
• Most innovations are, by default, designed to create profit. Manpower being one of the most expensive parts of any process, many of the innovations will cause job losses. At the same time, products and services will become so technical that most common citizens shall have no clue about what they are getting into! How do we make sure that continuous training of the workforce and common citizens happens in an effective manner so that the new technologies serve not only small groups of direct citizens?
• Lastly, how do we make sure that the developments are getting used for ethical applications?

Ethical Industry 4.0 = Industry 5.0!

For the last few years, some industries are trying to use the phrase Industry 5.0 to mean whatever they want it to mean (Ref: Humpty Dumpty). Even respected bodies like ISA have published articles where they use the phrase very lightly. This is really unfortunate. If something is not going to bring about a growth of a few thousand percent in wealth for common citizens then it can NOT be termed an IR.

At the same time, we can also appreciate that the innovations coming from the current avalanche of technological revolutions are like loose cannons. They can bring forth either an apocalypse or an affluent utopia. We need a framework of extended liberalism to work as the charm that can create an IR out of this. In early 2022, the EU started working on a policy-level framework that can help. They call this Industry 5.0. To me it is more like Industry 4¾! But, I do agree that these are not just some guidelines. These are guidelines that may modulate the current avalanche into a utopia and not a dystopia. This, once finalised, may set the modus operandi to respond to the three major concerns we discussed in the previous section. The guidelines of the EU’s Industry 5.0 would be focused on prosperity (not merely profit) and sustainability (of both the world and the world economy).

Epilogue: An Expanding Context of Liberalism

We engineers and innovators are often unable to appreciate the fundamental importance of the strength of ideas. The idea of liberalism has been creating prosperity for us for more than two centuries. If we keep expanding the meaning of liberalism then it shall benefit both us and our beautiful earth.

Around the 1IR, the ideas of liberalism started their impact. People began thinking beyond the old rigid hierarchies to consider the life of the poor and helpless (like labourers and previously designated slaves).

Around the 2IR, these ideas got stronger. Human dignity and equality started gathering roots. This was empowered and, in turn, motivated a firm belief in science which treats everyone equally (a ball falling will hit a person irrespective of his social/financial status)!

Around the 3IR, liberalism started including not just men from the western world but anyone from anywhere in the world. Endeavours of treating everyone equally started with this new wave of redefined liberalism.

Around the 4IR (if it happens), we should see the expansion of liberalism to include every living and non-living entity on the planet. Animal rights and the rights of rivers and mountains would be taken as seriously as human rights.

Let us hope that we do not go numb with the exponential growth of technological innovations and take the right steps to metamorphose this avalanche of technological revolution into the exploding prosperity of an industrial revolution!