Page - 8 - in Intelligent Environments 2019 - Workshop Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Environments

The “Automation of Everything” Era Hind KHYATI Nokia Abstract. We are at the beginning of an era of profound transformation and human progress — a new industrial revolution. This “Automation of Everything” era will be brought about by digital interfaces, data analysis and control of the physical world through “smart” networks. These networks will support the digitalization and connection of everything and everyone with the goal of automating much of life. This major industrial revolution promises to unlock trillions of dollars of economic value in the next decade by driving massive improvements in productivity in physical and digital industries alike, enhancing quality of life in safer, healthier and more sustainable communities. Keywords. Industrial, revolution, smart, networks, productivity Summary Industry is driven by a constant quest for productivity. They seek all means to most efficiently produce and deliver their goods and services. Growth in productivity is among the leading indicators of economic value and a strong measure of progress in the industrial age. Yet, in the last few decades, productivity growth has slowed dramatically. That is surprising to many, given the unprecedented advancements in information and communications technology (ICT). After all, we have witnessed massive innovation in the Internet era and the digital transformation of enterprises is well underway. A closer look at US economic data reveals that it is just 30 percent of industries who are benefiting most from digitalization and automation. Information economy segments and IT-centric verticals such as financial services have made the lion’s share — 70 percent — of total investment in ICT. As a result, they are benefitting from a nearly 4x faster productivity growth rate. These gains are just the low-hanging fruit harvested by segments that drive the information economy. The gap is set to widen further, as it is the top 5 percent of these heavy investors in ICT — largely within the manufacturing and services sectors — that are seeing a majority of the productivity gains. In contrast, traditional asset-intensive industries have lagged in the transition to the digital economy and thus have not yielded their share of benefits from the transformation. Even as the companies in this “physical economy” collectively represent 70 percent of US GDP and employ three-quarters of the US workforce, these industries have experienced a productivity rut over the past two decades. Now things are changing. Industries in the “physical economy” have begun their digital transformation and the opportunity for realizing a much bigger productivity boom is before us. As the Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, deep analytics based on artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), augmented reality (AR), robotics, remote control and digital twinning technologies mature and reach a critical mass of adoption, the opportunities to energize traditional industries are countless and within Intelligent Environments 2019 A. Muñoz et al. (Eds.) © 2019 The authors and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). doi:10.3233/AISE190014 8