Cultivation of informed minds necessary to avail fourth industrial revolution’s opportunities

‘The Dynamics of the Fourth Industrial Revolutions: Opportunities for Pakistan’

Terming mining of the reservoirs of population’s brainpower as the need of time, the speakers at a seminar urged for preparation of open and learned minds in order to benefit from the opportunities unfolding with the fourth industrial revolution age.

They were speaking at the seminar ‘The Dynamics of Fourth Industrial Revolution: Opportunities for Pakistan’, which was organized by Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Islamabad on February 16, 2018 in continuation of its series of programs on the subject of ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’.

The session was chaired by Mirza Hamid Hasan, former secretary, Ministry of Water and Power, member IPS-National Academic Council and chairman, IPS Steering Committee on Energy, Water and Climate Change; and addressed by Dr Gulfaraz Ahmed, former Federal Secretary, Petroleum, and DG-IPS Khalid Rahman.

Speaking of approaching opportunities for Pakistan in the wake of fourth industrial revolution, Dr Gulfaraz said that the world is standing at the brink of a revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, and this transformation will be unlike anything the humanity has ever experienced before. Though we are not sure how this new revolution will eventually unfold, it is very much clear that our response towards it should be integrated, comprehensive, and involve all the stakeholders.

Shedding light on the subject, the speaker said that where the first industrial revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production, the second used electric power to create mass production, and the third introduced us to the digital world, the unfolding fourth industrial revolution, which is evolving at an exponential pace and is exhibiting unprecedented speed of breakthroughs, has already started blurring the lines between digital, physical and biological spheres of today, and will soon be impacting every industry of the modern times.

The speaker further detailed that the fourth industrial revolution is powered by quantum computers which are million more times faster than the present-day super computers. The machines will not only solve every complex problem we face today with much precision, but will also pave way for artificially intelligent, human-mimicking, self-learning machines. Now if we keep in mind that the machines never die, they never tire, they never get sick, and their learning capacity increases with every learning as every time they have a broader base to build upon, it is not very difficult to visualize that they will eventually overtake humans in learning.

The speaker said that today’s world had progressed from growing and selling agriculture products during agricultural revolution and then manufacturing and selling industrial products during industrial revolution, and it is now shifting towards creating and selling of ideas. This was where the wealth of future innovation, scientific advancement, development and growth laid, and only those nations which realize this fact in time, nurture the most abundant and precious resource of their brain-banks, and then make the use of this collective power as the central pillar of their long-term strategy, will reap the dividends.

Speaking of imperative measures for Pakistan in such a situation, he urged for massive financial deployment in the country’s education system, maintaining that one cannot visualize or even understand the opportunities available unless he has an open and informed mind.

The speaker laid great emphasis on fostering the country’s knowledge economy while stressing that effective public-private partnership was needed to invest into research and development activities. The initiative, he viewed, will produce intellectual brains whose work will finally translate into tradable products.

“Investment in the minds will give you the most quicker and sustainable wealth”, he summarized.

Hasan backed Gulfaraz’s opinions stating that the world was now becoming knowledge-driven and acquiring of knowledge would be the key to success in the coming times.

He said that Pakistan had a youth bulge of over 60% in its population, yet it was surprising to see why the country doesn’t develop. Education, he viewed, should be the top-most priority for the country in these circumstances as the country needed open minds to think, innovate and adopt to the changes brought forth by the AI revolution.

DG-IPS in the end endorsed both the speakers stating that the creative thinking, flexibility and imagination towards approaching problems was precisely what’s needed to answer the challenges posed by the forthcoming revolutionary age.