The fourth industrial revolution is upon us

Driverless cars and trucks rule the road, while robots "man" the factories. Super-smartphones hail Uber helicopters or even planes to fly their owners across mushrooming urban areas. Machines use algorithms to teach themselves cognitive tasks that once required human intelligence, wiping out millions of managerial, as well as industrial, jobs.

These are visions of a world remade — for the most part, in the next five to 10 years — by technological advances that form a fourth industrial revolution. You catch glimpses of the same visions today not only in Silicon Valley but also in Paris think tanks, Chinese electric-car factories or even here at the edge of the Sahara.

By Jim Hoagland

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-is-upon-us/2017/11/22/5ff97086-cd62-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html?utm_term=.d2ee49c6b35f