We are living at the dawn of the Fifth Industrial Revolution and we must act boldly

The Fifth Industrial Revolution is in the intelligence outside of us, it is in artificial intelligence. This was stated by Dobroslav Dimitrov, Chairman of the Management Board of the Bulgarian Employers' Association for Innovative Technologies (BRAIT), at the opening of the Economic.bg ALL IN business forum, organized in partnership with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and BRAIT. ALL IN, organized in partnership with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and BRAIT.

"What impressed me about the event was the idea behind ALL IN – along with all the 'in' things, such as Innovation, Industry, Inspiration, there is also an idea from poker, where 'all in' means putting all your chips on the table. There are moments in life when you have to go "all in," and if you don't have the courage, you miss the moment. It is no coincidence that all nations have a version of this phrase, the most famous being the Roman version: "Fortune favors the bold," added Dimitrov.

We live in interesting times – whether it's a curse or a blessing, it doesn't matter. We are living at the dawn of the fifth industrial revolution, and the problem with this name is that it creates a misleading impression of what it means," said Dimitrov.

According to him, the current revolution has nothing to do with the last four, which were about the automation of human labor, because the fifth is about artificial intelligence.

The worrying thing is that the future is almost instantaneous and we don't have time to prepare for everything that is happening - this is the fundamental difference with the first four revolutions," added Dimitrov.

He gave an interesting example from an article published 19 years ago, in which a renowned AI scientist predicted that in the next 40-50 years, artificial intelligence would not be able to beat a human at the Chinese game of Go (editor's note: one of the oldest and most complex strategy games, originating in Ancient China). However, just two years after publication, this happened and the world Go champion lost.

Even the people developing the technologies cannot predict what is happening," noted the chairman of BRAIT.

He explained the rapid progress by the fact that there are more living scientists on Earth now than ever before.

They are cooperating, to a greater or lesser extent, and the brain trust working on technology today has no parallel in the past."

He gave another example: if we had asked Chat GPT how to make tarator 6-8 years ago, it would have taken all the electricity of a small power plant to answer. Today, the energy required for this has decreased 45,000 times.

When such a big change happens, the advantage is not in being big, but in being fast," Dimitrov summarized, reminding us that all countries start from the same position and, accordingly, everyone has a chance to prosper, as long as they take the initiative in time.

Translated with DeepL.