"Era" is a word with a wide range of meanings. The "era" involved in this series refers to the concept of an era of revolutionary change in the history of human social development , a historical era in which the development of human science and technology triggers changes in social production and lifestyle. The basis for triggering changes in social production and lifestyle is social productivity. Therefore, when studying the epoch of artificial intelligence, the first thing to do is to make an in-depth analysis of social productivity. What is social productivity? Social productivity refers to the ability of human society to create wealth. Human beings build "tools" and master "tools" on the basis of "knowledge", which forms the productive capacity of social wealth. "Knowledge" and "tools" have become the two basic elements driving the development of human society, and the basic structure of social productivity is "people + tools", in which knowledge is implicit. In the structure of productive forces, "knowledge" is the most active element, with the development of human knowledge, its center of gravity constantly from "people" to "tools" transfer.
What we talk about and care about the most is the ultra-high base and ultra-high speed of social productivity in the age of artificial intelligence. Today , our personal, family life, learning, education, etc. are integrated in a smartphone-centered ecosystem; the country, the government, the operation of enterprises, management, marketing and the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, blockchain tightly dependent on; the people live in an AI ubiquitous smart community, smart city, to fully enjoy the wisdom of health care, smart home, smart transportation, Intelligent travel to bring convenience; even if the earthquake such as natural disasters, people rely on modern communications technology, smart phones, drone monitoring, GPS positioning, life detector robots and other intelligent tools, but also to minimize disaster losses.
Compared with the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, today's ubiquitous artificial intelligence has far exceeded the economic field, and is advancing into the field of superstructure; the third kind of culture created by artificial intelligence is a full-scale invasion of humanistic culture, so that artificial intelligence has entered the ethical era; intelligent tools have fully replaced human mental labor. Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence has opened up an unprecedented emerging era of human society, a completely different era from the Industrial Revolution, a double super social productivity development era.
2 Artificial Intelligence is not the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution
Many people wrongly refer to Artificial Intelligence as the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution. They take the industrial revolution in the 18th century as the starting point, and call the age of steam engine the 1st industrial revolution, the age of electrification the 2nd industrial revolution, and the age of informationization the 3rd industrial revolution, and therefore call the age of intelligence the 4th industrial revolution. This division of the era is obviously influenced by the German industry 4.0 and deduced the concept.
Industry 4.0 is a concept put forward by Germany at the Hannover Messe in 2013 to enhance industrial competitiveness. Based on the different stages of industrial development divided into four eras , namely, Industry 1.0 steam engine era, Industry 2.0 electrification era, Industry 3.0 informationization era and Industry 4.0 intelligent era. Obviously, this division only indicates the epochal changes in the industrial field since the Industrial Revolution. If "steam engine" and "electrification" can indicate the connotation of the industrial revolution, then "informatization" and "intelligence" are far beyond the industrial revolution. "are far beyond the industrial field. It is obviously wrong to call the era of artificial intelligence the era of the 4th industrial revolution.