Key Inventions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Introduction

Just like the previous three industrial revolutions, the fourth revolution, which started in 2011, is expanding at a ferocious pace. For the last decade, almost every year a prominent invention has made headlines that resulted in the hype, which often went bust. For example, in 2011, IBM Watson beat humans in the game of Jeopardy! And went through a boom-bust cycle during the next nine years. Similarly, in 2015, Waymo demonstrated key inventions related to driverless cars. During 2015 and 2020, driverless cars were touted by pundits and investment bankers alike, which led to a partial bust in 2021-2022.

In the first three industrial revolutions, steam engines, electric motors, and central processing units (CPUs)became diversified and ubiquitous. Likewise, in the current revolution, by 2050, AI systems are expected to diversify analogously with innumerable uses in daily life.

AI as a Cornerstone of the Revolution

And, during the last six months, one group of Deep Learning Networks in Artificial Intelligence called Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPTs) has captured human imagination worldwide and while they have been improving at an exponential rate, we still do not understand their capabilities or limitations.