The New Information Technology Revolution: Opportunities, Challenges and Responses

Source: People's Forum Network

Since the 1990s, a new information technology revolution represented by the Internet, big data, and artificial intelligence (compared with the traditional information revolution represented by telegraph, telephone, and television) has had a major impact on the world, profoundly changing the social form, appearance and operating mechanism of all mankind. Following the first industrial revolution represented by the steam engine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the second industrial revolution represented by electricity and chemical industry in the middle and late nineteenth century, and the third industrial revolution represented by atoms, lasers, biological and other technologies in the middle and late twentieth century, the current technological revolution is often called the fourth industrial revolution. To be precise, however, the new information technology revolution that is currently under way may far outweigh the significance of the second and third industrial revolutions.

Historically, there have been two ways to divide the technological revolutions of human society, one is the previous industrial revolutions as described above, and the other is the division on a larger scale. For example, Douglas, the representative of the new institutional economics. North called the agricultural revolution in human history ten thousand years ago the first economic revolution, and the industrial revolution that began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the second economic revolution. The agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago led to the era of fishing and hunting, and began the era of obtaining agricultural products through large-scale cultivation, which greatly increased food production and supported the formation of complex human social organizations. Thus, the Agricultural Revolution marked the formal formation of human society. The industrial revolution that began three or four hundred years ago has further greatly improved the productivity of human society and the ability of social organization, and formed a production mode of large-scale machine industry and a corresponding strict hierarchical division of labor system at the social level, which can be called industrial society. Today's new information technology revolution is forming a new human activity space based on networks that transcends space restrictions, forming an accurate social analysis based on big data and a new machine intelligence subject based on artificial intelligence, based on which mankind is forming a new information society. This fundamental change in the whole society, its value even exceeds the industrial revolution of three or four hundred years ago, can be compared with the agricultural revolution to form human society. If the technological revolution of 10,000 years ago is called the agricultural revolution, and the technological revolution of 300 or 400 years ago is called the industrial revolution, the current technological revolution can be called the information revolution. It is only on the basis of such a grander historical understanding that we can have a clearer understanding of the significance of this technological revolution and what kind of preparations should be taken today.

The new information technology revolution has brought about fundamental changes and opportunities in human society

The social changes brought about by a technological revolution are reflected in all corners of society, especially the new information technology revolution. From individual life to economic form to the composition and operation of social organizations, almost everything in today's society has been completely changed by new information technology. However, the fundamental changes in human society brought about by new information technologies lie in three points:

The Internet has made the world "smaller". For a long time, the world was huge for human beings. Therefore, many places before the Industrial Revolution considered themselves to be in the center of the world, as Europeans considered themselves to be the center, and we thought we were the center of the country. Since the Great Navigation and Industrial Revolution, the improvement of transportation and communication capabilities has gradually shrunk the world. Humans can travel from one continent to another in a day, but the world is still huge. The advent of the Internet has completely compressed the world into a "small" world. This is the six-dimensional space theory of the networked world, also known as the small world theory. According to its theoretical and practical observations, in the age of the Internet, the distance between any two individuals in the world does not exceed six. Before the advent of the Internet, sociologists tested it with traditional letters, and most of the distances were much larger than six people. The increasingly developed and ubiquitous Internet has completely solved the connections between devices and devices, individuals and individuals, and even individuals and devices in human society, such as brain networking. Thus creating a new cyberspace system that spans spatial distances. This space system is tightly embedded in human society and gradually expands throughout the Earth's surface, such as the network of stars. The Internet has greatly compressed the information reach distance in the traditional world and reduced the transaction costs of the whole human society. Traditionally, economic forms that have been physically concentrated, such as factories, office buildings, and large corporate organizations, have to be distributed along information and logistics networks over a wider, low-cost area. This means that the traditional economic and social forms of human beings based on physical constraints have become more diversified for a long time. Large factories will be decomposed into small factories, employees do not have to go to the enterprise to concentrate on the office, some cities can become more convenient because of the convenience of life and become population gathering, may also be because of the convenience of information so that the population is diverted to small and medium-sized cities. Economic and social activities that previously required direct contact between people and equipment can also be distributed across regions. With the universal connection of the network and the decentralization of information dissemination methods, the organizational structure of society has changed greatly, and for a long time since the agricultural revolution, human society has formed a strict pyramid structure, there are de facto hierarchical classes in society, and information flows layer by layer with social classes. The networked society gradually breaks this strict hierarchical structure, and the flow of information shows a multi-directional nature, which makes the entire society more uniform and equal in the distribution and access to information, which makes it possible to break the shortcomings of the long-term strict hierarchical social and management system. All in all, the universal connection of the network has made human society closer and flatter for the first time, and the world has not only become "small" but also "flat".

Big data is making the world more precise. Big data is a natural consequence of the extensive extension of high-speed digital networks, chen Liming, chairman of IBM Greater China at the third World Internet Conference in 2016, said that the data generated in the past two years has accounted for 90% of the data generated by human beings in history, and this trend continues, that is, human beings are increasing their total data at an exponential rate. The era of big data has fundamentally changed the pattern of behavior that humans have long relied on fuzzy information. For example, in the era of big data, people can continuously observe the meteorological state of every second within a large regional range, thereby forming more accurate weather big data and making more accurate weather predictions; merchants can accurately judge and obtain customer demand information through customer databases, thereby reducing market risks at the production and purchase ends, which not only increases profits, but also better meets consumer needs, and the utility benefits of the whole society are also improved. Therefore, in the era of big data, every traditional natural person or organization naturally transforms into a data person or data organization. Through the multi-dimensional synthesis of big data, it is possible to accurately depict the behavioral states and characteristics of a person or organization, so as to better manage or serve it.

Artificial intelligence is making the world smarter. AI technology has a history of more than seven decades, but substantial improvements have been made driven by networks and big data. The network has developed methods such as grid computing, parallel computing, and cloud computing to rapidly improve computing power, and big data has provided accurate templates for many human behaviors, and the combination of the two has prompted the rapid improvement of artificial intelligence in recent years. In 2016, Google's AlphaGo program defeated go world champion Li Sedol as a landmark event, in addition to driverless, machine translation, industrial control, e-sports and other fields, artificial intelligence has shown a level close to or even exceeding humans. Therefore, the significance of artificial intelligence is extremely significant, it is the first time that human beings have created a non-biological intelligence carrier that does not depend on humans, so that for the first time, machines can not only replace human physical labor, but also replace human mental labor to the greatest extent. Through extensive network connections, artificial intelligence can be combined with various digital terminals in production and life, that is, all digital devices may be intelligent, whether it is cars, televisions, mobile phones, or even a tree and a flower connected to sensors, through the brain interface can even make people communicate directly with animals. That is to say, not only are computers becoming wiser, but everything in the world is likely to become wiser. Further, with the help of biomimicry and materials science, artificial intelligence can also enter human society in human form, providing better material products and various services for humans. Humanity seems to have found a channel to continuously improve its wisdom and ability to work.

The new information technology revolution brings great challenges to transformation

However, any fundamental technological revolution brings not only opportunities and good expectations, but also fundamental changes to the original social structure and organization and the way it operates, which brings great challenges to transformation.

All social individuals and organizations face the networking challenge of gradually adapting to behavior and structure. There are many challenges that the network poses to individuals and organizations, but the most fundamental challenge is that all social individuals and organizations must gradually adapt to the networked way of existence and behavior, which is not only reflected in the behavior of individuals and organizations, but also in the structure of the organization. In the case of individuals, networking means that individual behavior should be adapted to the coexistence of social life in the traditional natural world and social life in the network world at the same time. In the natural world, individuals meet real physical needs and realize the physical ability of individuals. In the online world, it is more necessary to meet social communication and spiritual needs. With the increasing expansion of the network and digital society, there are fewer and fewer areas of need and function that can only be satisfied in the real world, and in addition to the basic physiological needs of the body, more and more areas of individual needs and functions can be met and realized in both the network and the real world. Through the connection of the online world, the real world is also closer. Thus, people today and in the future live in a mixed society of both the physical and online worlds. The bigger challenge comes from the networked challenge of various organizational behaviors. Businesses must adapt to the status quo of working both networked and mobile, and take advantage of this distributedness to bring efficiency and low cost. Merchants must adapt to online marketing and face the challenges of transitioning from physical to online stores. The most serious challenge comes from the transformation of government, which is a huge division of labor system with a strict hierarchical structure. This has its own inherent inevitable logic, that is, subject to relatively backward information capabilities, only through the pyramid-type section structure can we effectively achieve a wide range of management operations and improve organizational efficiency through administrative specialization and division of labor. However, in the Internet era, on the one hand, the government can break through internal information barriers through strong network capabilities, build common and shared government big data, promote information flow and resource sharing within the organization, and form an overall governance structure with efficient internal circulation. On the other hand, the government can also strengthen the connection with society and the market through more and more distributed information channels, break the external boundaries of the government, build a transparent government, and widely realize public service functions through multi-subject collaboration. At the same time, for the government, the increasingly flattening of society makes the government have to change the traditional positioning of "firmly occupying the center of governance", and form an equal relationship with other subjects under the framework of the law to jointly promote the improvement of governance capabilities.

All social agents will face the risk challenges of exposure behavior and privacy. The accurate data collection, transmission, storage and analysis capabilities of big data not only better explore the needs of individuals and other social subjects, but also monitor and preserve the behavior and privacy of individuals and various social subjects, and can be analyzed by others or the public. This constitutes the biggest overall social risk in today's big data era. In the traditional era, the natural isolation between people constitutes a relatively safe barrier of freedom. People are free to think and act without harming the interests of others, so privacy is one of the cornerstones of human freedom in the traditional era. Today, the universal big data collection system makes almost all the actions of every natural person monitored by big data, and even when returning home, there are various intelligent voice devices to collect user information. The same is true for organizations, whereas in traditional times, an organization and its members only need to meet the organization's behavioral requirements in general, and their internal operating processes do not need to be detailed. However, in the era of big data, a variety of data channels, including active disclosure and passive detection of organizations, have exposed the traditionally relatively closed and secret organizational operation process to society. For example, in the past, it was difficult for consumers to understand the production process of the enterprise, and only the quality of the company's products was reliable. However, today's consumers and the whole society are not only concerned about the final product of the enterprise, but also pay attention to whether the production process is clean and safe, whether it pollutes the environment, and whether it abuses labor. This is especially true for the government, which traditionally even if the government takes the initiative to disclose government information, ordinary citizens can only get limited macro information, including budget, function, and the number of civil servants, and the internal operation process of the government is not known. However, in today's society, citizens have higher requirements for whether the internal operation process of the government is legal, clean, and transparent. Therefore, the large-scale mutual exposure of social subjects is not only an objective fact in the era of big data, but also a systemic risk. Closer mutual contact and inquiry between people and between people and organizations have increased the tension of the spirit and the weakening of freedom while improving the efficiency of social operation. These are all issues that must be treated with caution.

All social agents will face the challenge of alternative competition of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is developing more and more rapidly, providing human beings with a highly beautiful future imagination at the same time, but also casting a shadow. Today's rapid leap in artificial intelligence capabilities has made human inquiries about artificial intelligence from what artificial intelligence can do to what artificial intelligence cannot do. Then, a question will naturally arise, in the era of highly developed artificial intelligence, where should people go? According to the evolutionary trend of artificial intelligence, the rate of improvement of artificial intelligence has been much higher than previous estimates by humans. Some research institutes estimate that AI will replace at least one-third to half of the workforce in the next decade, and that by about 2050, AI's intelligence will surpass that of humans. Therefore, that is to say, from now on, almost all labor jobs will face the challenge of artificial intelligence substitution. Of course, the replacement of human beings by artificial intelligence in the labor link is not a bad thing, on the contrary, it is a liberation of human beings. However, it is a basic fact that the economic and social systems that have developed over thousands of years are deeply rooted in human physical and mental labor. The production of products, the exchange of goods, and the provision of services are, without exception, based on human labor. The large-scale substitution of artificial intelligence for human labor is bound to mean that the traditional social and economic system based on human labor must realize the transformation from simple human labor to human labor working together with artificial intelligence and even most of the labor completed by artificial intelligence. A serious challenge lies before all mankind, that is, how to design a new economic and social system after a large area of the working population loses its working position, so that they will not be abandoned by the new system of rapid progress, and the establishment of a large economic welfare system may be the biggest challenge facing the present. In addition, issues such as how to treat the social attributes and legal status of artificial intelligence, ethical issues after artificial intelligence enters society, human dependence and degradation caused by the extensive use of artificial intelligence, polarization caused by artificial intelligence, and control of the minority over the majority caused by artificial intelligence will all pose major social challenges.

Basic principles and preparation strategies for responding to the new information technology revolution

Obviously, the new information technology revolution is pushing human society into a new historical stage, which is not only a major opportunity for all human civilization, and it is impossible to suppress the continuous progress and development of new information technology by any way. Therefore, from now on, we must adapt and seize the opportunities, be prepared to reduce risks and meet challenges, including basic principles and specific strategies.

As far as the basic principles are concerned, three principles should always be adhered to:

Principle 1: The development and application of new information technologies should make life easier for the vast majority of people than hard.

Principle 2: The development and application of new information technologies should make the vast majority of people more free and not enslaved.

Principle 3: The development and application of new information technologies should make the vast majority of people feel more equitable than unfair.

As far as the first article is concerned, while greatly improving social productivity, the new information technology will also further digitize people, so that people can keep up with the speed of numbers rather than the opposite, and the overall efficiency of the whole society will be greatly improved. At the same time, the frequency of people's work has also greatly accelerated, the brain always has to process information from all aspects, and the competitive pressure from digital survival is generally apparent in all fields, and the emergence of artificial intelligence has exacerbated this replacement anxiety. Therefore, what we need to reflect on is how to make it easier for the vast majority of people and not the other way around while constantly evolving new technologies. Otherwise, it is contrary to the original intention of developing digital technology.

As far as the second article is concerned, the all-round digital connection and big data monitoring system make people feel more and more close attention from others and society, and the shortening of this psychological space greatly restricts rather than expands human freedom. Therefore, it is a prominent issue that digital transformation can expand human freedom, not just compress human freedom. Increasing digitalization seems to have made people pay more attention to the internet and reduce the real space for activity. Obviously, this also runs counter to the original intention of developing digital technology.

As far as the third article is concerned, there is obviously a trend of exacerbating social inequality in new information technologies, for example, the digital divide makes it difficult for a considerable number of social groups to adapt to the digital transformation of the whole society, and this trend may become more obvious in the future. More and more digital scenarios make it difficult for people to adapt to digital devices, and the widespread use of network economy and artificial intelligence has also exacerbated the concentration of capital to a smaller number of people, and a considerable number of individuals in society may feel more unfair. This is something that needs to be avoided. All in all, new information technologies should make life happier for the vast majority of people in society, not the other way around.

From the perspective of specific institutional preparations, on the basis of the above principles, it is obvious that the current society should make the following institutional preparations: First, adopt an attitude of attaching great importance to and encouraging development of new information technologies. The new information technology revolution is an important historical opportunity that is difficult to estimate for the development of the country and the whole society, and it must be seized. Second, further strengthen the protection of individual freedoms and rights by law. While technology is developing rapidly, laws and institutions must also keep up. Law is the last bottom line to protect civil liberties, and in terms of citizens' privacy, citizens' right to work and rest, the law must keep pace with the bottom line of freedom to develop plans for future technologies in a forward-looking manner. Finally, strengthen the pre-study and design of the new economic and social system. In particular, for how the socio-economic system should operate after the universal application of artificial intelligence, how to ensure the life and development of a large number of non-employed people, it is necessary to systematically plan from the current situation.

The new information technology revolution that is currently being experienced is no less than the major historical transformation of mankind in the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution. From the perspective of the long-term development of civilization, at present, our country must firmly seize this historic opportunity, which is not only reflected in the exploration of technology, but also in the supporting institutional civilization to prepare for and contribute wisdom to all mankind.

[He Zhe, the author is a professor at the Department of Public Administration of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (National School of Administration)]

Editor-in-Charge: Wang Xuan