Industry 4.0: The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Humanity has witnessed three previous industrial revolutions: first presaged production using steam/water power, followed by the use of electricity to help with the production quantities, then third based on bits and bytes, which brought the information technology generation. Now, we are in the nub of a fourth industrial revolution, driven by big data and artificial intelligence. Just as the three previous industrial revolutions transformed our world, this latest revolution, also referred to as Intelligence Revolution or Industry 4.0, is going to bring unprecedented change.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is significant in terms of its scale, scope, and convolution. It is the combination of various emerging technologies, such as AI, the internet of things (IoT), robotics, autonomous vehicles (drones and self-driving cars), 3D printing, quantum computing, and many more. This convergence of technologies is fundamentally influencing the way we live, think, work, and interact with each other.

What makes AI so impactful, and why now?

For years, it was believed that computers would never be more robust than the human brain, but this has proven wrong due to the accelerated technological advancements.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the technology that gives intelligent machines (be they computers, drones, robots, or whatever name called) the potential to “think” and behave in a “manner” that previously only humans could do. This means they can understand the world around them, learn from information, make decisions from what they have learned, and then take suitable action – generally without human interference. It’s this ability to acquire knowledge from experience and act upon data that is so censorious to the Intelligence Revolution, especially when we take into account the large volume of data. AI requires data, most of it for learning and making smart decisions. Hence, this is the basic reason why we need the Intelligence Revolution.

Why AI suddenly so Transmuting?

AI is not a new notion. From past decades, we are well aware of the idea of building intelligent machines. So, why AI has marked a sudden change? The answer to that question has two aspects:

• Excessive Data: We have a large amount of data than ever before. Almost everything we do creates data, whether in the digital world or the physical world. Data is swiftly growing. It is estimated that every human on this planet is creating 1.7 Mega-Bytes of new data every second. By the end of 2021, there will be more than 50 billion smart devices in the world, full-fledged to collect, examine, and share information. This data is important for AI, helping it to grow much faster, smarter, and more precise in a short time period. For example- Spotify recommendations. When we listen to more music through Spotify, it gives us a better recommendation according to our choice. Amazon, YouTube, and Netflix recommendations work on the same phenomena. Due to this advantage, most of the industries are looking for the best AI companies to upgrade their system.

• Spectacular leaps in computing power: We can now store, process, and analyze data at a large scale by using cloud computing. Without this, our data would be of no use.

3 Guideposts for AI providers and practitioners

For designing, building, procuring, and deploying the technologies in the AI Revolution, the three guideposts are-

1. Automation– Using automation on labor-intensive and time-consuming work is not new to begin the process. Today, data is the staple diet of modern industries. With the use of machine learning, high-level data could be easily extracted from raw data inputs. This helps in improving product quality by easily detecting the abnormalities in the system and by-product monitoring. Some other benefits of Automation are-

• Reducing operational obstacles
• Eliminating errors and exceptions
• Ensuring Compliance
• Stronger Cyber Security
• Improving Customer experience

Auto AI is the first technology that was released last year that helps in the easy understanding of the machine learning model-building process and eventually robotize, the work of building, utilizing, and maintaining the AI models.

2. Language- It is not compulsory to create languages to adapt to technology in the AI Revolution. But instead, AI can adapt to human language. The AI technology uses computational language to provide analysis and phonological interpretation of the human-language text. Hence, also known as natural language processing (NLP). NLP allows computer systems to learn, interpret, and recognize human language with great perfection because it understands human dialects, opinion, pitch, and more.

3. Trust- The inventions and transformation of the Industrial Revolution would have never come into force if there had not been trading built on faith. Trust in the quality of the product became more important after automation in manufacturing and other trade activities where producers and customers cannot meet face to face.

Conclusion

With the emergence of the Industrial Revolution, all industries are growing rapidly. Every business is getting smarter- from traditional to digital-native companies, from start-ups to global companies. It is impacting all organizations regardless of their shape and size, and those who can’t adopt AI will struggle to compete in this competitive world.