11 minute read
Shaping the 4IR: A day in the life of Tomorrow’s Citizen
Md. Anower Hossin
Advertisement
O
Origination:
Right now, 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is one of the most discussed issues in Bangladesh. Seminars, conferences and round table discussions are organizing by different stakeholders on 4IR & its problems and prospects. Scholars are trying to make stakeholders aware about 4IR concept and inspiring entrepreneurs to adopt newer technologies to get advantages out of it. They are reminding that businesses are to adopt 4th & 5th generation technologies to remain them up-to-date with concurrent market demands.
Recently a fascinating Bangladeshi couple, Rini Ishan and Rakib Reza have quietly been manufacturing commercial robots in Bangladesh, including a 3D concrete-printing robot. So far in 2018, their company Planetary Limited has exported 11 robots to South Korea. We can now proudly say that Bangladesh is also in the age of robotics and 3D printing.
Thousands of young Bangladeshi people have already put the country on the global IT freelancing map. We feel gratitude to the passion, imagination and steady work of a few, ‘Digital Bangladesh’ is now a reality, contributing to the transformation of our social and economic landscape at the grassroots. For instance, 4,554 Union Digital Centers, more than 100 simplified public services, e-procurement and smart health cards, digital job platforms, online open course wares are leading Bangladesh down the 4IR path.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR):
Global society is undergoing dramatic and transformative changes driven by the rapid evolution of technology in, what is sometimes called, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).We are a nation of innovators. Throughout our history, we have seized the day to create a better future for ourselves. The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate
production. Now, a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.
Shaping the 4IR:
Millions of young people around the world are unemployed or underemployed, while employers have jobs, they cannot fill. It is a challenge partially rooted in the growing mismatch between youth’s skill and employer needs. If unaddressed, the problem will likely intensify as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) characterized by the marriage of physical assets and digital technologies-transforms society, Economies, Jobs and people’s personal lives.
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 emerging technology breakthroughs 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 (AI) is all around us, from self-driving cars and drones to virtual assistants and software that translate or invest. Impressive progress has been made in AI in recent years, driven by
exponential increases in computing power and by the availability of vast amounts of data, from software used to discover new drugs to algorithms used to predict our cultural interests. Digital fabrication technologies, meanwhile, are interacting with the biological world on a daily basis. Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit.
A day in the life of Tomorrow’s Citizen: A visionary thought
While it is difficult for anyone to judge fully the impact of all these 4.0 technologies on humanity, the following futuristic walkthrough will help us to better appreciate some of what is to come and what might be a typical day for an ordinary citizen in the future. We are sleeping restfully with sensors adjusting the ambient room temperature as well as managing humidity levels throughout the night ensuring us get the best sleep possible. Our alarm clock has monitored our sleep over several days and decided on its own as to the best time to wake us up, ensuring we are not late for work. Sensors gradually brighten the room so as not to shock our system. At the same time, our shower has started and it is automatically adjusting the water temperature to our preference, as it has learned from our past showering habits.
As we approach our closet freshly showered, our closet suggests what to wear based on our office dress code and weather conditions outside. Meanwhile downstairs, our coffee has been brewing in our kitchen and our refrigerator has made suggestions on what to eat based on what is inside the fridge and what is most fresh. Our TV or computer screen has activated and pulled up programming in the order that we normally watch during breakfast. After our breakfast, our driverless car is getting ready in the garage. It has adjusted the inside temperature based on weather conditions and has programmed the optimal route to our work place after monitoring live traffic patterns. As we are whisked away to work, our house has already turned off lights, adjusted the thermostat, checked the fridge to see what’s low and put in an automatic order for essential groceries with the local supermarket and has also autonomously cleaned itself. Our time spent traveling to work is recaptured as productive time. In this sense, our car has become a mobile office, wired and equipped with all the capabilities of the office setting, allowing us to get much work done before even setting foot into the office. Our car will assimilate all built-in road sensors which will automatically change the speed limit when the roads are bad or when there has been a snarl in traffic. Up-to-the-minute data will be fed to the car’s dashboard. Audible reports will be made through the car’s sounds system and text reports will be fed to our mobile device as well as those of our loved ones. Once we get to the office, our car will auto-park, or take itself to the automated car wash if it needs a clean after letting us out. The office doors will scan our unique biometric signature and let us in. All this time our IoT (Internet of Things) health wearable device has been monitoring all our vital signals and reminds us to drink water and take our blood pressure medication. Once we open our computer, the AI program we asked last night to perform analysis of company data walks us through the conclusions it reached through a VR headset, interactively allowing us to investigate simulations as well as the sources of information it used and the logic behind its decisions. We hold a virtual meeting with colleagues and clients in another city to discuss the findings in a ‘smart meeting room’, allowing all of them to be present in the same room, sharing and displaying work through the augmented reality. For lunch, we decide to go out of the office for a stroll. Our augmented reality glasses give us suggestions on where to eat based on our diet plan and reminds us to pick up dinner on the way back home. As we pass by a local convenience store, relevant information for items us need at home are displayed to us with a discount voucher arriving on our smart device. We put in an online purchase for the goods, enter our address and we are done. Payment has been taken securely from our bank account and the goods will be delivered by drone to the safe delivery box at our home. We remotely access our home delivery box telling it to expect a drone delivery and give it access through a uniquely shared one time access code. After lunch, our doctor calls us as he has noticed our blood pressure has been alarmingly high during the same time period over the last week. He asks us to put on the IoT blood pressure monitor in the office and checks our blood pressure remotely. He decides to prescribe additional medication which the local pharmacy will deliver to us within the next hour at work. Towards the end of the working day, we get some reminders of social commitments we have that night. We sit in our autonomous car which puts on relaxing music and dims the light, allowing us to get some rest before getting home, navigating itself through traffic and detours with no effort. While we were at work our IoT sprinkler system didn’t need to come on because it rained the night before. Our home is at the temperature we like and the shower is ready.
After showering, we open the safe deposit box to find the items we had ordered earlier, along with other essential groceries that our refrigerator automatically ordered for us which we had run out of. Our phone alerts us that we have to pick up our son from soccer practice. We speak to our car through our smart phone and tell it to pick him up from his school location. The car picks him up safely while we put away the items that were delivered. We realize that we've forgotten to order dinner and ask the home AI system to give us suggestions. It checks what we’ve had for dinner over the past few days and provides meal options taking into consideration food preferences and the health history of each of our family members. To close out the evening, someone suggests watching a movie but the decision is difficult considering all the different interests in the room. A simple solution is to let our TV wall screen make the choice. But this is no ordinary screen. It’s a paper thin, hardened screen which covers all the walls in our home. Through the home AI system, it has access to data from all of our family members. It knows heart rates and blood pressure; it knows preferences in past programming they consumed. It knows emotional and mental health history. Instantaneously it makes several good suggestions. The movie is displayed on the wall we choose. As we’re watching the movie, all surrounding walls change color to match the type of movie we are watching to create a better ambience. After watching the movie, our home AI system suggests us sleep based on our breathing patterns and oxygen levels. Our bedroom is adjusted automatically for comfort, the alarm is automatically set, all doors and windows locked and our home AI goes into monitoring mode, protecting and monitoring us and our family for another night.
The ways Bangladesh can participate in the 4IR:
1. Enhancing accessibility to technologies and infrastructure 2. Making technology more affordable 3. Developing 'future-proof' skills 4. Identifying niche opportunities 5. Introducing enabling and mitigating policies and regulations 6. Harnessing the potential of partnership
Risks & Opportunities in the 4IR:
Technological progress has always meant change, and with change comes uncertainty. When that uncertainty begins to cloud issues as fundamental as humans’ basic utility within society—as AI is now doing for many workers—it is understandable that people demand answers from our leaders about where 4IR will lead. Similar fears have accompanied each of the previous three revolutions, and we should take both comfort and instruction from the way that societies successfully managed those past instances of technological disruption. Key barriers still exist, including the cost of infrastructure, varying levels of global interconnectivity and variable cost of data accessibility. Perhaps the greatest fear for many is that 4IR, particularly AI, will eliminate jobs and lead to massive growth in inequality. Previous revolutions have ultimately led to greater wealth and opportunity, and this one will be no different, but this generalization glosses over the experiences of workers who lived through those transitions and offers little insight into how to manage the inevitable disruptions that accompany these changes.
Summing up:
In consequence, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us, and our economy, society, and politics will change in dramatic ways, for better and for worse. How painful the transition is, and who benefits and how much, depend on choices that we have yet to make. And as in the previous industrial revolutions, understanding the technologies reshaping our world and building new policies and institutions for the future will be essential to maximize the benefits of technological change and minimize its risks and costs to the world. The speed of technological updates often surpasses the speed at which current & future talent can be upskilled and trained, leaving a gap between skills and the skills available.
Bangladesh is now gradually experiencing the effects of the wave of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). But building an efficient labour force remains the biggest challenge for Bangladesh due to our technological incompetence. Our backdated education system needs to go through a reformation so that enough awareness is created about the global skills in demand and so that our labour force is trained to excel in IT, 4IR tools and interpersonal skills. Only then will we be adequately equipped to face the effects of the 4IR.
Achieving this level of alignment requires a shared value mindset, effective implementation of strategies and a mechanism for systemic integration and iteration. Therefore, we urge policy-makers, the public, private sectors and civil society organizations to work together.
» About the Author
Student of ICSB
