The Revolution Woven by Humanity's Hands: From Industry 1.0 to 4.0
One of the most distinctive features of human history is the relentless pursuit of change and development. This quest, combined with technology and science, which have advanced at a dizzying pace, especially in the last few centuries, has carried us to the threshold of a brand new world every time. One of the most important turning points of this journey is undoubtedly the industrial revolutions. Let's go through these revolutions, each of which left its mark on human history, like the lines of a story:
1. The Transformation with the Power of Steam (Industry 1.0)
Our story begins in the late 18th century, in the heart of Europe. With Watt's invention of the steam engine, humanity, for the first time in its history, was able to control a power that went beyond its own muscle power. The smoke rising from the chimneys of factories heralded not only steam, but also a new era. From now on, production would take place at a previously unimaginable speed, and machines would begin to replace human labor. Of course, this change would profoundly affect everything from social structure to daily life.
2. Accelerated Development in the Light of Electricity (Industry 2.0)
By the mid-19th century, humanity was introduced to the unlimited potential of electricity. Light bulbs illuminated the night and electric motors began to run in factories. We were now able to produce larger and more complex machines and work faster and more efficiently with mass production lines. With the advances in communication technologies, the world began to shrink and the spread of information accelerated.
3. The First Steps of Digitalization (Industry 3.0)
The mid-20th century witnessed dizzying developments in computers and electronics. With the emergence of the first computers, followed by the internet revolution, humanity stepped into a whole new dimension, the digital world. Automation and robot technologies began to minimize the human factor in production processes. Industry 3.0 opened the doors to a future where even jobs that previously required human intelligence could be done by machines.
4. At the Dawn of the Future (Industry 4.0)
Today, we are on the brink of a brand new era called Industry 4.0. Cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things and big data analysis are redefining manufacturing processes. Machines can now not only do what they are programmed to do, but also analyze data and improve themselves. While production processes are completely digitalized with the concept of smart factories, the need for human labor is changing and brand new professions are emerging.
5. From Blue and White Collars to Iron Collars with the Artificial Intelligence Revolution
Even in Industry 4.0, we could have predicted that humans would have a place in work and production, because this automation revolution, like other industrial breakthroughs, would take away people's simple and routine jobs and create new job descriptions. But I think it's much more than that. I'm talking about Industry 5.0, a world order in which the need for humans is diminishing every day and may one day disappear altogether. Because until now, even though machines were physically more capable than humans, they could not reach the cognitive capacity of humans, so people who could adapt themselves to such changes could find jobs that fit their competencies. However, a development in 2023 and the process that followed showed that artificial intelligence can also be a competitor at the cognitive level of humans.
The development I am referring to was the launch of ChatGPT, which we all know well. Considering how ChatGPT 3.0 amazed people when it was first released, we know that today no one would even give ChatGPT 3.0 a chance next to new language models. The fact that this development took place in just 1.5 years demonstrates the breathtaking speed of development of this technology. Open source AI models and ever-evolving chatbots are enabling us to gain incredible momentum on the road to artificial general intelligence and move much faster.
But is all this limited to the virtual world? Of course not! Another exciting transformation triggered by AI is in the field of humanoid robots. While we once marveled at the slow and cumbersome movements of Boston Dynamics' robots, we have begun to feel that groundbreaking developments are just around the corner.
Especially the exponentially increasing capacity in artificial intelligence and data processing power in recent years is reshaping robot technology. Because there is a big difference between robots evolving at the cognitive level like humans and humans trying to improve robots. (Because artificial intelligence doesn't sleep and doesn't get tired. If you need me to tell you how fast it is, you are already way behind. God have mercy on you because AI won't.) Moreover, with the world's leading technology giants such as Nvidia ambitiously entering the field of robotics, it is obvious that we will make much faster progress in this field.
If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said that there was still a long time before artificial intelligence could replace humans, because at that time it was a complete idiot. But when I saw how far it has come in 1.5 years, I realized that this development is not happening at a constant pace, but at an accelerated pace, and I think something needs to be done about it. Because the need for humans in the new world is decreasing day by day, and if you want to gain a place in this new world order, you have to transform yourself, not improve yourself. Humans need to not only be able to use artificial intelligence, but also to work in harmony with it. Given how fast and efficient AI is, the two most important skills to acquire are creativity and efficiency. Because the person needs to adapt to the speed of artificial intelligence by working efficiently and to be able to take a place in the new world by further developing the abstract thinking ability that artificial intelligence still has a long way to go.
It's time to think about whether artificial intelligence and robots will make the jobs you do today redundant in the next 5 to 10 years. According to a 2023 study, it was estimated that automation and artificial intelligence would replace 2.4 million jobs by 2030. This prediction, made on the basis of primitive artificial intelligence, needs to be reconsidered with the point it has reached in just 1.5 years. Because artificial intelligence is coming to replace humanity, not just to do the boring jobs we don't want to do.
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