Navigating the fourth industrial revolution.

A new framework for advanced manufacturing is being promoted in Germany, and is increasingly being adopted by other countries. The framework represents a coalescing of digital and physical technologies along the product value chain in an attempt to transform the production of goods and services1. It is an approach that focuses on combining technologies such as additive manufacturing, automation, digital services and the Internet of Things, and it is part of a growing movement towards exploiting the convergence between emerging technologies. This technological convergence is increasingly being referred to as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, and like its predecessors, it promises to transform the ways we live and the environments we live in. (While there is no universal agreement on what constitutes an ‘industrial revolution’, proponents of the fourth industrial revolution suggest that the first involved harnessing steam power to mechanize production; the second, the use of electricity in mass production; and the third, the use of electronics and information technology to automate production.) Yet, without up-front efforts to ensure its beneficial, responsible and responsive development, there is a very real danger that this fourth industrial revolution will not only fail to deliver on its promise, but also ultimately increase the very challenges its advocates set out to solve. At its heart, the fourth industrial revolution represents an unprecedented fusion between and across digital, physical and biological technologies, and a resulting anticipated transformation in how products are made and used2. This is already being experienced with the growing Internet of Things, where dynamic information exchanges between networked devices are opening up new possibilities from manufacturing to lifestyle enhancement and risk management. Similarly, a rapid amplification of 3D printing capabilities is now emerging through the convergence of additive manufacturing technologies, online data sharing and processing, advanced materials, and ‘printable’ biological systems. And we are just beginning to see the commercial use of potentially transformative convergence between cloud-based artificial intelligence and open-source hardware and software, to create novel platforms for innovative human–machine interfaces. These and other areas of development only scratch the surface of how convergence is anticipated to massively extend the impacts of the individual technologies it draws on. This is a revolution that comes with the promise of transformative social, economic and environmental advances — from eliminating disease, protecting the environment, and providing plentiful energy, food and water, to reducing inequity and empowering individuals and communities. Yet, the path towards this utopia-esque future is fraught with pitfalls — perhaps more so than with any former industrial revolution. As more people get closer to gaining access to increasingly powerful converging technologies, a complex risk landscape is emerging that lies dangerously far beyond the ken of current regulations and governance frameworks. As a result, we are in danger of creating a global ‘wild west’ of technology innovation, where our good intentions may be among the first casualties. Within this emerging landscape, cyber security is becoming an increasingly important challenge, as global digital networks open up access to manufacturing processes and connected products across the world. The risks of cyber ‘insecurity’ increase by orders of magnitude as manufacturing becomes more distributed and less conventionally securable. Distributed manufacturing is another likely outcome of the fourth industrial revolution. A powerful fusion between online resources, modular and open-source tech, and point-of-source production devices, such as 3D printers, will increasingly enable entrepreneurs to set up shop almost anywhere. While this could be a boon for local economies, it magnifies the ease with which manufacturing can slip the net of conventional regulation, while still having the ability to have a global impact. These and other challenges reflect a blurring of the line between hardware and software systems that is characteristic of the fourth industrial revolution. We are heading rapidly towards a future where hardware manufacturers are able to grow, crash and evolve physical products with the same speed that we have become accustomed to with software products. Yet, manufacturing regulations remain based on product development cycles that span years, not hours. Anticipating this high-speed future, we are already seeing the emergence of hardware capabilities that can be updated at the push of a button. Tesla Motors, for instance, recently released a software update that added hardware-based ‘autopilot’ capabilities to the company’s existing fleet of model S vehicles3. This early demonstration of the convergence between hardware and software reflects a growing capacity to rapidly change the behaviour of hardware systems through software modifications that lies far beyond the capacity of current regulations to identify, monitor and control. This in turn increases the potential risks to health, safety and the environment, simply because well-intentioned technologies are at some point going to fall through the holes in an increasingly inadequate regulatory net. There are many other examples where converging technologies are increasing the gap between what we can do and our understanding of how to do it responsibly. The convergence between robotics, nanotechnology and cognitive augmentation, for instance, and that between artificial intelligence, gene editing and maker communities both push us into uncertain territory. Yet despite the vulnerabilities inherent with fast-evolving technological capabilities that are tightly coupled, complex and poorly regulated, we lack even the beginnings of national or international conceptual frameworks to think about responsible decisionmaking and responsive governance. How vulnerable we will be to unintended and unwanted consequences in this convergent technologies future is unclear. What is clear though is that, without new thinking on risk, resilience and governance, and without rapidly emerging abilities to identify early warnings and take corrective action, the chances of systems based around converging technologies failing fast and failing spectacularly will only increase.