Industry 4.0: How Wearables and AI Powering the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Imagine waking up not with an alarm but with a gentle nudge from your smart implant, telling you it's time to rise. This isn't a scene from a sci-fi movie—it's a glimpse into the future we're inching towards, thanks to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, a concept well-known to many, seemed like a distant vision back in 2014. Now, in 2024, that vision is becoming a reality. In this article, we'll reflect on Klaus Schwab, the founder and the chairman of The World Economic Forum, societal and technological predictions, compare them with the current state of technology and discuss its significant impact on the world as we know it.

We'll navigate the realms of labor automation, cutting-edge developments in wearables, and the omnipresent influence of AI. Amidst these transformative forces, we'll spotlight MPAX's pivotal role in redefining what jobs look like today and how they might look in the future.

So, buckle up—you're in for a wild ride.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution - what is it? The Fourth Industrial Revolution also known as Industry 4.0, encompasses augmented reality, wearables, machine automation, and beyond, driving a new era of industrial innovation. It heralds a future brimming with possibilities for operational efficiency and production methodologies. However, with the latest development of AI, automation is taking over sooner than predicted, and a huge shift in labor is inevitable, with over 60% of jobs set to be replaced by AI by 2030. Let’s dive deeper into understanding the current landscape.?

Understanding the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The concept of "Industry 4.0" was virtually unknown before 2014, yet by 2019, it had surged and it continues to manifest itself in 2024 more than ever. A McKinsey global survey (2018) revealed that 68 percent of participants viewed Industry 4.0 as a critical strategic focus, with 70 percent reporting their companies were already implementing innovative technologies by 2018. In 2024, 61% of companies are already investing in AI and machine learning.?

This revolution is not just a continuation but a quantum leap from its predecessors: steam powered the first Industrial Revolution; electricity fueled the second; early automation and machinery defined the third; and now, intelligent computing systems are sculpting the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It's a period marked by a blend of technology that blurs the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres, transforming industries and societies in ways previously unimagined.

To sum up, the three previous industrial revolutions all created a major societal change and opportunity. The question arises - what changes are we facing now and what opportunities it presents? One difference between its predecessors is that this societal shift is happening faster than any others which creates an effect of a pressure cooker. But in this high-stakes kitchen, it's not beef that's simmering under immense pressure—it's our communities, economies, and the very essence of what it means to be human, all stewing in the pot of emerging technologies like AI and wearables.?

Drivers of the fourth industrial revolution according to Shwab?

This mega-shift is driven by three primary forces: physical, digital, and biological. Each driver is transforming industries and societies in profound ways.?

Let's delve deeper into these drivers to understand their implications.

Physical (Robotics and services)

A survey on fictional robots in sci-fi movies (2021) analyzed 134 sci-fi films containing 108 unique fictional robots, emphasizing that most fictional robots (over 90%) are depicted with interaction abilities surpassing or equal to human-human interactions.?

Well, we’ve got that one right. Automation is one of the biggest drivers of the 4th Industrial Revolution as it’s the direct application of technology in increasing industries’ capacity to supply the demand. The big switch happened when instead of having to be programmed through an autonomous unit, robots can now access information remotely via the cloud and connect with a network. As a result, a report by the World Economic Forum indicates that by 2025, machines will perform more current work tasks than humans, organizations today estimate that 34% of all business-related tasks are performed by machines today.?

Digital?(AI and decision-making, AI and white-collar jobs)

Taking the narrative further - imagine adding a brain to each one of those automated machines. Then, not only the manual labor but everything that ties in the production process is at risk. In his book, Shwab mentions this young entrepreneur, Sam Altman, who’s just raised a large investment for his company OpenAI. Fast forward 7 years - ChatGPT is changing the industries as we know it. Since the lunch, things have been moving at the speed of light, and in our view, this was the main driver for Industry 4.0 to fully take shape. Imagine this… By 2010, automation has only been seen as something to replace heavy-duty tasks. In 2024, automation has advanced so much to the point where it could plan, execute, and overlook the manufacturing process altogether. Of course, someone would be needed to manage the process and initiate the tasks, but… It’s only one person, compared to 15-200 people who were needed to complete a full car in 2017! Now that AI can replicate certain parts of a human brain, including creativity, mathematics, empathy, and reasoning, no profession is safe. We see Sora, the latest AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions - a serious competitor for all those video makers; ChatGPT, of course - your ultimate friend, business partner, copywriter, travel planner, and so on. In fact…

Biological (Implantable Technologies)

While genome sequencing has been achieved, 10 years and $2.7 Billion later (National center of Biotechnology Information, 2018), the next step is synthetic biology. The science is progressing so fast that the limitations are now less technical than they are legal, regulatory, and ethical. But our sight and attention lean more towards the implantable technologies, what we now call wearables.?

Shwab identified wearables as one of the key adaptable technologies that will shape our future and society, amongst 3D printing and AI. The first use case is the improvement of human physics: eventually, the wearables are imagined to optimize health and performance under conditions of extreme stress or produce exceptions that enhance a soldier’s performance, allowing a human to carry loads of around 90kg without difficulty.?

As for now, the most common wearables are smartwatches and fitness trackers, serving the same purpose of tracking physical performance to obtain optimal health. But people are getting more curious about the all-in-one technology approach, with smartwatches gaining more and more integrated functionalities rounding up the technologies that we have, like phones, cameras, and internet connection. In recent months, we have witnessed the smart glasses reign rising with the launch of Apple Vision Pro. It’s one step further towards the future Shwab and other visionary innovators see, where we would use wearables for daily tasks, for generating income, and eventually - for basic biological functions. ? Perhaps soon-to-be-implantables are still wearable at the time, besides Musk’s Neuralink - but a question arises… How far do we want the implantable part to go? Are we ready to become a semi-androids?

Impact - Deep Shift

Deep Shift - Technology Tipping Points and Social Impact survey done in 2015 has participants predicting certain innovations and their advancement. Whilst the data seems to be old, it’s an interesting point of assessing our current situation based on the predictions in the past.?

Based on the main drivers of Industry 4.0, here are the most interesting predictions by 2025.

1. Vision as the new interface?

86% of respondents expected 10% of reading glasses to be connected to the Internet by 2025.?

Although the latest smart glasses aren’t publicly called reading glasses with the Internet - we’ve got the point. Starting with Google Glass - smart glasses have come a long way. Nowadays, you can find all sorts of them with various functionalities, from AR, and gaming, to advanced visual aids and impressive content creation capabilities like MPAX-supported smart glasses that are practically a content creation studio in your bag! The market was only waiting for the society’s acceptance. Now, after the Apple Vision Pro smart glasses release, there’s nothing to stop it!?

2. Wearable internet?

91% of respondents expected 10% of the population to be wearing clothes connected to the internet.?

Techradar reports that currently, the number of users of wearable devices is over 1 Billion.

A pretty accurate guess, we might add. From glasses to smartwatches, not even mentioning the smartphone… One has a device connected to the high-speed Internet on him - pretty much all the time.?

3. Implantable technologies?

82% of the respondents believed that by 2025 we will have the first implantable mobile phone available commercially.?

So far, implantables are mainly used in medicine as it is the first good enough reason to accept something so invasive in your body - is that it increases your health. But people are growing more relying on it with the global implantable medicine device market set to soar to $271B by 2032 from $112B back in 2022, according to GMI (2022).??

Shwab is also talking about ‘tracking tattoos’ and a built-in smartphone reading your brain and helping express your thoughts. One can only dream, but with technologies advancing so fast, any given problem could be solved with innovations. So, overall - even if close, this prediction hasn’t turned into a reality yet.?

4. AI and decision making

45% of the respondents expected the first AI machine on a corporate board of decisions. Could we assume Elon Mask is AI?

Joke aside, to our knowledge, there is not a case where AI is presented as a board member (unless not officially), so this exciting prospect has to be negated, for now. However, here's what’s happening, according to BusinessInsider:

“Jobs that copy-paste responses are a thing of the past because of AI, says e-commerce CEO Suumit Shah. Shah had previously drawn flak for announcing he replaced 90% of his support staff with a chatbot. Though his post sparked backlash, Shah told Insider, "Over time, everybody will start doing this.”

5. AI and white-collar jobs

An Oxford Martin School study predicted that up to 47% of US jobs in 2010 were likely to be computerized or replaced by AI in the next 10-20 years.

14 Years later…

White-collar and clerical workers represent somewhere between 19.6%–30.4% of all employed people globally , according to the United Nations. According to a recent report of 750 business leaders using AI from ResumeBuilder (2023), 37% say the technology replaced workers in 2023. Meanwhile, 44% report that there will be layoffs in 2024 resulting from AI efficiency.

So, the labor market is changing and only beginning to take shape. The predictions are changing every day, so all we have to do is wait and see - but the trend is clear.?

While-collar jobs are being replaced by AI.?

6. Robotics and services

86% of respondents expected to see the first robot pharmacists in the US.?

Although very precise, this prediction signifies societal acceptance of robots overall, so whether it’s a pharmacist or not - there’s no big difference. In China, robots have been serving tea since 2018 but it is yet to arrive in the West. Whilst being widely applied in logistics, production, and manufacturing, robots in customer-facing roles aren’t a thing yet. But witnessing vast improvements in robotics by Elon’s Musks’s humanoid Optimus and its marvelous clothing folding capabilities - we can predict that robots will be a more common sight in customer service but it is safe to say that we won’t see any robot patrols walking down the street in this decade, at least!?

What does AI think? “In the shadow of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a dystopian future unfurls, where wearables and implants have transformed humans into perpetual data streams. Privacy has dissolved into the ether, with each person's movements, thoughts, and health monitoring through devices once celebrated for their innovation. Artificial Intelligence, the crown jewel of human intellect, now orchestrates society, its algorithms dictating decisions once made by human minds. The workforce, a casualty of relentless automation, has been usurped by machines, leaving creativity and human ingenuity as vestiges of a bygone era.

Implantable technologies, heralded as medical miracles, have become the chains that bind humanity to an omnipresent surveillance state. Personal freedom, traded for the allure of convenience and safety, has given way to a society where every individual is but a cog in a vast, unseen network. The streets, envisioned as a utopia of robotic assistance, now echo with the silent march of automation, enforcing the will of a digital overlord.

As the fabric of society unravels, replaced by a monotonous tapestry of AI efficiency, the once vibrant diversity of human occupation fades into obscurity. This future, once the domain of science fiction, has become a chilling reality—a world where the essence of humanity is lost in the pursuit of technological advancement, leaving us to ponder the true cost of our relentless quest for progress.”

-ChatGPT on the extreme side of the predictions above

What separates us from artificial intelligence?

Now, let’s get back to the reality. Taking into consideration what was predicted, what is happening now, and what the future holds in the most extreme case, we’ve concluded that there’s one very clear direction that we as a global society need to go and that is harnessing the technologies to aid us, keep improving our understanding and looking for ways to apply it into our daily lives so it serves us, not the other way around.?

The essential element that separates us from AI and robots is consciousness, including our ability to experience emotions, empathy, and self-awareness. That is nothing else but our creativity, and ability to share those emotions and put them to use to inspire us to do extraordinary things.?

That’s what we do at MPAX - harness the technology of wearables and live streaming to connect, inspire, and enable people to create, share, and earn.?

Where MPAX stands in the midst of this

MPAX, with its innovative approach to streaming and wearable tech, is riding the wave of this revolution, reshaping content creation and consumption.

Even though things are moving at a fast pace - each technology has to come at the right time when the society is ready. Otherwise, it won’t be accepted, as we’ve seen in the past such cases as with smart glasses themselves, pioneered by Google Glass failed product launch. Amid rapid technological advancement that defines the Fourth Industrial Revolution, MPAX is perfectly timed and attuned to the rhythm of societal readiness. The urgency for alternative revenue streams becomes real as we stand at this crossroads, where AI's ascendancy casts long shadows over traditional job markets. This is the current environment—a period of transformation and, importantly, of adaptation. The development of AI brings with it concerns of job displacement across various sectors. However, it also ushers in an era where human creativity must outpace AI capabilities. The demand arises for new forms of content, ones that AI cannot replicate. For instance, the authenticity of point-of-view (POV) live streaming and live interactions offers a genuineness that AI cannot mimic. These experiences, rich in human touch and spontaneity, become invaluable.

MPAX: become a Paxer or a Beholder MPAX technology goes both ways: it’s the home base for the unique content you cannot replicate (for viewers-beholders) and the hub of a global gigs exchange for instant cash (For the streamers-paxers).

Embracing Wearables for Dynamic Interaction: MPAX integrates wearables into live streaming for richer experiences. By using wearables, creators engage audiences beyond traditional digital limits, creating more authentic and relatable content.

Adapting to Automation: In a world of automation, MPAX fosters new jobs and creativity. It offers a platform blending tech and creativity, providing new income sources amid increasing automation. This move highlights the value of human creativity amidst technological shifts.

Ethical and Social Responsibility: MPAX considers ethical and social aspects of tech advancement. It aims for technology to empower people, fostering an inclusive community and considering broader societal impacts and individual well-being in the journey forward.

Conclusion?

MPAX leads the charge in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, offering users profitable opportunities through its innovative platform. By harnessing live streaming and real-time interaction, it fosters authentic connections while also providing creators with lucrative revenue streams.

As a fusion of technology and creativity, MPAX opens doors for users to earn profits in an evolving job market. With the integration of wearables, it not only stays ahead of global tech trends but also expands the possibilities for users to monetize their content and experiences, turning futuristic concepts into tangible earnings in their everyday lives.

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