What are the most interesting progressive (not Luddite) critiques of the 4th Industrial Revolution, especially robotics, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity systems like blockchain and the like?
The Brazil-Russia-India-China-SA bloc meets here in Johannesburg in late July. Our local BRICS elites engage in virtually unregulated high-tech acts of surveillance, censorship and repression. Now, "4IR" babble is being promoted heavily here now.
I gather 4IR could destroy half the world's current employment in some sectors such as finance. A leading South African practitioner, Elon Musk, warns that AI could wreck humanity within the coming few decades.
As you see below, African dissemination of 4IR appears to be a very high priority for the BRICS' so-called 'Sherpas' (a term we would want to banish from such abusive deployment, out of respect for the Nepalese people's desires).
It is also a major project of BRICS Business Council chair Iqbal Survé, who has been relentlessly pushing 4IR rhetoric in his Independent group newspaper chain, in part through a proposed $4 billion "Sagarmatha" listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Investigative journalists the illicit relations between Survé and the $150 billion Public Investment Corporation (SA bureaucrats' pensions) and prevented the deal from happening, but it is likely Survé will seek more capital to move his personal for-profit 4IR agenda forward, at the same time he and other BRICS elites try to confuse society with pro-4IR rhetoric.
What should we be saying about all this? A brics-from-below summit will be announced this week. Critical info will be vital, thanks comrades.
Patrick