How to adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The technological revolution is a constantly moving momentum that accompanies different societies in their evolutionary process.

The implementation of artificial intelligence is currently a reality in subjects as diverse as medicine or data processing in the administration.

This step forward forces society to look at itself in the mirror and adopt a new behavior that allows it to engage with an unstoppable process.

From this analysis the documentary

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prepared by the Funcas Foundation, the Savings Banks Foundation, for which it has had the presence of the most active minds in this so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution.

In the video, of around 25 minutes, scientists and teachers portray the particularities of the work moment in which we find ourselves, and extrapolate from its characteristics the needs that young people who start their studies, to people face who are actively seeking employment.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is profoundly transforming society, driven by a series of technological developments.

I don't think we can survive as a species and face the challenges that we face without the help of the technologies we are developing now, ”says Nuria Oliver, PhD in Artificial Intelligence from MIT.

“Digital transformation is expected to destroy 75 million jobs, but create 135 million.

So the balance is positive, ”adds Silvia Leal, scientific communicator.

Advances in technologies aimed at image processing, for example, have led to the fact that today, thanks to 3D printing, within the medical sector, surgeons can test their operations on a real-scale model of the patient's organ to which they they will try.

“There are artificial intelligence algorithms that analyze X-rays and are able to detect lung cancer even better than radiologists.

We have to understand that we are experiencing a profound transformation of our society against a background of technological development ”, completes Oliver.

However, the appropriate use of new technologies that will have as a direct consequence the disappearance or reformulation of many of the trades that exist today, and the creation, at the same time, of many others, is not understood, in the opinion of the experts. professionals, without a reformulation of the educational system that directs students towards this new conception of employment.

“The current educational model needs a revision, because its origins are from the industrial era in which it was manufactured in series and massively.

In this current era, what is characterized is the adequate personal treatment that information technologies are making possible ”, points out Faraón Llorens, director of the Chair of Digital Transformation at the University of Alicante.

The rise of Vocational Training

In fact, for some of those interviewed, the university does not even have to be the place to obtain this knowledge.

“You have to lose your fear of Vocational Training (FP).

The European Union is seeing that in five years it will require 65% of vocational training versus university students, and now it is the other way around.

In Spain we have an obsession with the degree ”, highlights Elena Ibáñez, founder and CEO of Singularity Experts.

“We have lived in a time when you were studying for a bachelor's degree, if you were lucky, money and time, you could study a postgraduate degree later, and that was ensuring you a professional career.

And now we live in a time when people with postgraduate degrees do not have a successful track record - 30% of university graduates do not find work four years after graduating according to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities -, and those who have a FP or even without it, but who learn concrete things and do it well, they have super successful careers ”, adds Leal.

The current educational system, sustained mainly on the traditional axis of separation between sciences or letters, has caused that between 2008-2018 technical careers have lost 74,000 students in Spain, generating a hole still to be solved.

“The demand for more qualified jobs is growing, which has to do with new technologies.

On the other hand, so does the demand for low-skilled employment, which does not require a high educational level but has an act contained in an interpersonal relationship.

And in the middle, the demand for work that can be replaced by algorithmic processes, by robots, such as accounting and translation, is decreasing ”, warns Raymond Torres, director of Situation and International Analysis of Funcas.

“We live in a paradoxical situation: we cannot live without technology, but there are fewer and fewer people studying these careers,” Oliver completes.

With a universe of learning possibilities multiplied exponentially with the appearance of social networks, the possibilities of training and adaptation to present and future needs will mark the success of the next steps within the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Of course, although technology has become an inseparable travel companion, everything still depends on the human being.

"The moments of technological disruption are moments in which there is more demand to give meaning to social evolution", summarizes Torres.