'Intelligent' robots could be running your company within 10 years, experts warn
'Intelligent' robots could be running your company within
10 years, experts warn
15:35, 20 JAN 2016 UPDATED 18:57, 20 JAN 2016
BY AGENCY STAFF
Robots are moving into homes, hospitals, shops and
restaurants - and could soon be running your company
How would you feel about having a robot on your board of
directors?
Implantable mobile phones. 3D-printed organs for
transplant. Clothes and reading-glasses connected to the Internet.
Such things may be science fiction today but they will be
scientific fact by 2025 as the world enters an era of advanced robotics,
artificial intelligence and gene editing, according to executives surveyed by
the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Nearly half of those questioned also expect an artificial
intelligence machine to be sitting on a corporate board of directors within the
next decade.
Welcome to the next industrial revolution.
After steam, mass production and information technology,
the so-called "fourth industrial revolution" will bring ever faster
cycles of innovation, posing huge challenges to companies, workers, governments
and societies alike.
The promise is cheaper goods and services, driving a new
wave of economic growth. The threat is mass unemployment and a further
breakdown of already strained trust between corporations and populations.
"There is an economic surplus that is going to be
created as a result of this fourth industrial revolution," Satya Nadella,
chief executive of Microsoft, told the WEF's annual meeting in Davos on
Wednesday.
"The question is how evenly will it be spread
between countries, between people in different economic strata and also
different parts of the economy."
Robots are already on the march, moving from factories
into homes, hospitals, shops, restaurants and even war zones, while advances in
areas like artificial neural networks are starting to blur the barriers between
man and machine.
One of the most in-demand participants in Davos this year
is not a central banker, CEO or politician but a prize-winning South Korean
robot called HUBO, which is strutting its stuff amid a crowd of
smartphone-clicking delegates.
But there are deep worries, as well as awe, at what
technology can do.
A new report from UBS released in Davos predicts that
extreme levels of automation and connectivity will worsen already deepening
inequalities by widening the wealth gap between developed and developing
economies.
Ian the Atlas robot can vacuum, sweep and even put the
rubbish away "The fourth industrial revolution has potentially inverted
the competitive advantage that emerging markets have had in the form of
low-cost labour," said Lutfey Siddiqi, global head of emerging markets for
FX, rates and credit at UBS.
"It is likely, I would think, that it will
exacerbate inequality if policy measures are not taken."
An analysis of major economies by the Swiss bank
concludes that Switzerland is the country best-placed to adapt to the new robot
world, while Argentina ranks bottom.
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