4 In Favour of Machines (But Not Forgetting the Workers): Some Considerations on the Fourth Industrial Revolution Sergio Paba and Giovanni Solinas
Introduction We are in the middle of what many call the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). We have some idea of when and where it started, but there is still much debate about how long it will take to deliver all of the promised fruits to the economy and society. Many scholars and observers foresee a hypothetical future of jobless economies, where machines could perform not only most of the physical activities now carried out by humans but also a large part of intelligent human activities. In these future scenarios that oscillate between utopia and dystopia, one wonders what should be done to allow everyone to benefit from the fruits of automation and the well-being promised by machines and artificial intelligence (AI). At the moment, however, of this future world that
S. Paba • G. Solinas (*) Marco Biagi Department of Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy e-mail: sergio.paba@unimore.it; giovanni.solinas@unimore.it © The Author(s) 2018 E. Ales et al. (eds.), Working in Digital and Smart Organizations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77329-2_4
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