If there is something we have learned from each industrial revolution, it is that once they get underway, the changes they generate occur with great speed. It would be redundant to repeat at this point in the book that my fear is that the speed of the 4th Industrial Revolution, or the AI revolution, depending on how we want to see it, will bring changes at speeds never seen before, and that will reduce the possibilities of retraining the workforce in a constantly changing market.
The modern consumer demands new products and services that give them a better quality of life at the lowest possible price, and sometimes, they even demand that it be “free,” in quotes of course because nothing is free, as in the case of social networks that we perceive as free but in reality, we are the product for the brands that advertise on these platforms. This was partly driven by a paradigm shift regarding our notion of privacy. Those consumers born from the 90s onwards grew up sharing almost their entire lives on social networks. Their preferences, the places they visited, the people they surrounded themselves with, their most cherished memories, everything, absolutely everything, and much more, like their iris and biometric data, were given away for free to large tech companies and, to a lesser extent but no less relevant, to various public bodies. The modern consumer then understands that the mere fact of sharing that data helps improve the services they receive, although they expect, of course, that their data will be used in an ethically correct way. Unfortunately, we know that this is not always the case. We are all familiar with Facebook’s scandals through Cambridge Analytica, with Brexit, and Donald Trump’s presidential election against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Returning to the original question posed by the subtitle of this section, its answer is difficult because of the dichotomy it presents. On one hand, we could argue that consumers will be the big winners of this technological revolution. Today we have thousands of applications available that help us in the most varied ways. There are not only apps to order a taxi, find plane tickets, listen to music, or find a date, but also to track menstrual cycles, connect with distant family or friends, send and receive money, and even sign online petitions to support a new bill or a social movement. All this and more is at our fingertips, with free applications. The benefits that new technology offers are clear. On the other hand, we could also argue that the speed of adoption of new automation processes will end up leaving many people without jobs, so in the end, the idea will be perpetuated that the big winners are those who hold physical and/or intellectual capital. But the current working individual, and their collective peers, potentially speaking, could cease to be considered part of the target audience for goods and services from businesses if they do not have the money to pay for it or to buy the products and services shown to them in the form of ads within this universe of applications, as they lose their jobs and, therefore, their source of income generation. Who will buy what I produce if no one has the money to pay me? That will be the question companies will ask themselves.