Posted date: May 12, 2023
On 11 May 2023, KAS-CICP Public Lecture: The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Driver or a Drag to ASEAN’s Economic Integration? was the topic of intense discussion among officials, experts, and scholars.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is about more than just technology-driven change; it is an opportunity to help everyone harness converging technologies in order to create an inclusive, human-centered future. However there are anxiety that the 4IR create concerns about the future of human labour and the possibility of substitution of the human factor by machines and robots.
ASEAN also look at the 4th Industrial Revolution seriously in recent years by announcing the “Consolidated Strategy on the Fourth Industrial Revolution for ASEAN” in 2021 and identified three focus areas: Technological Governance & Cybersecurity, Digital Economy, and Digital Transformation & Society.
If ASEAN wants to become a winner in the 4th IR, the regional bloc must overcome challenges such as:
(1) redefine the role of manufacturing in Integrating and expanding the area of data science;
(2) realize the matching of digital infrastructure and human capacity;
(3) ensure that the ASEAN Economic Community can actually promote regional integration and digital transformation;
(4) make sure that “Consolidated Strategy on the Fourth Industrial Revolution for ASEAN” is more than just a wish list to include a workable roadmap document that can operationalize the objectives to accelerate AMS’s digital readiness and innovation capabilities;
(5) overcome peer competition from countries like China, the EU, the US, Japan, and other developed countries and; (6) address challenges deriving from incorporating AI into robotics smoothly.
The public lecture raised two important questions at the end, (1) how citizens of ASEAN ensure that the technological progress that has been brought about by the 4IR can and will work for the benefit of society and not against it? (2) How can a community of think tanks assist in enhancing the ability of ASEAN governments to adopt the right policies and ensuring that socioeconomic growth deriving from the application of the 4IR is in complete accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by United Nations Member States in 2015.
