Abstract
In recent decades, rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies, such as big data, cloud computation and Internet of Things (IoT), have produced huge impacts on human society. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the impacts and challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and AI on social, commercial and geopolitical structures. Specifically, this chapter will explain how AI and new industrial revolution redistribute wealth, power and jobs across firms, social classes and nations.
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- 1.
The Three Laws of Robotics (Asimov’s Laws) are a set of rules which provide the fundamental framework to control the behavior of robots designed to be friendly to humans. These laws were proposed by Asimov in his 1942 short story “Runaround”: (1) a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. (2) A robot must obey the orders given by human beings, except where such orders conflict with the First Law. (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law (Asimov 1950).
- 2.
According the Chinese Room Argument, AI is impossible to achieve as those supporters claim that computers do or at least can think. This implies that Searle’s experiment smashed the development of strong AI and directed the path of AI development toward weak AI (Searle 1980).
- 3.
Strong AI (full AI) is an approach to construct AI with mental capabilities and functions that are like the human brain and emulate the actions of the human brain and human being. This includes the power of understanding and even consciousness. On the other hand, weak AI (narrow AI) is an approach to AI research and development with the consideration that computers can only just “simulate thought; their seeming understanding isn’t real understanding”. Weak AI simply acts by the rules imposed on it and cannot go beyond those rules (Chalfen 2015).
- 4.
The Chinese government proposed to initiate a national reputation system namely the social credit system. It was designed to assign a social credit rating to every citizen based on government data regarding individual economic and social status by using big data analytics. Citizens having low credit scores were banned from using trains and planes, granting loans and so on (Fullerton 2018).
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Chen, S.CY., Shen, MC. (2019). The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Development of Artificial Intelligence. In: Yu, FL.T., Kwan, D.S. (eds) Contemporary Issues in International Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6462-4_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6462-4_14
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