Global Technology Governance Report 2021: Harnessing Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies in a COVID-19 World (World Economic Forum - December 2020)

An essential consideration for government, business and civil society is how technologies are harnessed and regulated to accelerate growth, encourage innovation and build resiliency in the wake of COVID-19. How governments and other stakeholders approach the governance of technologies will play an important role in how we reset society, the economy and the business environment.

This report examines some of the most important applications of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies if we are to thrive in a post-pandemic world and the governance challenges that should be addressed for these technologies to reach their potential.

The technology areas it focuses on are artificial intelligence, blockchain, internet of things, mobility and drones and unmanned air systems.

Using tech to recover from the pandemic

Efforts to recover from the pandemic have triggered a tsunami of innovations in work, collaboration, distribution and service delivery – and shifted many customer behaviours. AI and data analytics have helped Taiwan, China predict the risk of infection. China has used drones and robots to minimize human contact. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is using blockchain to provide seamless digital services to its citizens, and the United States is using autonomous vehicles to deliver test samples to processing labs.

*************************************************************************************************************************

Foreword

" The emerging technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have a vital role to play as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuild our economies. While these technologies can help drive enormous social breakthroughs and economic value, they can also potentially be misused.

An essential consideration for governments, businesses and civil society is how these technologies are harnessed and regulated to accelerate growth, encourage innovation and build resiliency. How governments and other stakeholders approach the governance of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will play an important role in how we reset society, the economy and the business environment. Working together, the public and private sectors have the opportunity to nurture the development of Fourth Industrial Revolution technology while mitigating the risks of unethical or malicious uses.

With this in mind, the Forum worked with Deloitte to produce a practical handbook to examine some of the most important applications of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies if we are to thrive in a postpandemic world and the governance challenges that should be addressed for these technologies to reach their full potential. The Fourth Industrial Revolution will play a key role in ensuring our recovery from the pandemic and the avoidance of future crises 

Harnessing and disseminating the technologies

The collaboration is part of a larger World Economic Forum platform, the Great Reset, that explores how, as the world undergoes a great reset, our ability to harness and disseminate the new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution will play a key role in ensuring our recovery from the pandemic and the avoidance of future crises. The world will be a different place because of the pandemic and the vast technological change that will have taken place. The possibilities of new Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, deployed appropriately, should be used as the baseline to reinvent the way we operate in the new context: everything from government services, education and healthcare to the way business interacts with and provides value to its customers.

Global Technology Governance Report 2021  

Key insights

Our analysis revealed common challenges across the five Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies we focused on: artificial intelligence (AI); mobility (including autonomous vehicles); blockchain; drones; and the internet of things (IoT). These challenges include a lack of regulation, misuse of technology and challenges in addressing crossborder differences. For instance, one estimate suggests that bitcoin accounts for more than 90% of ransomware payments. And the lack of effective regulation of facial recognition technologies coupled with incidents of misuse by law enforcement agencies have caused a backlash against this technology throughout the world.

We profile a series of innovative governance and regulatory frameworks across the five Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies highlighted to address these and many other challenges. For example, Singapore’s AI governance framework can assist the private sector by providing guidelines on internal governance, human involvement, operations management and stakeholder communication. In Japan, the Financial Services Agency has accorded the Japan Virtual and Crypto Asset Exchange Association (JVCEA) the status of a self-regulatory body for the country’s crypto exchanges – recognizing the private sector’s role in providing effective governance.

Non-profit organizations are playing their part, too. For instance, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe facilitated a forum at which China, the European Union, Japan and the United States came together to develop a framework to harmonize autonomous vehicle regulations.

This technology governance report aims to help governments, innovators and other stakeholders understand the current opportunity. The pandemic and its aftermath have accelerated the urgency of addressing current gaps with effective governance frameworks. Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies can play a major role in helping us emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever before. With these practical insights and examples, we hope that governments and industry can collaborate and foster innovation while providing effective governance. The study will enable conversations across a broad cross-section of stakeholders to partner on technology governance globally. The Forum looks forward to collaborating with public and private organizations to develop and deploy Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies responsibly."

William D. Eggers (Center for Government Insights Executive Director, Deloitte, USA) 

& Ruth Hickin (Strategy and Impact Lead, World Economic Forum)

Executive summary

" This study examines some of the key applications of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies for thriving in a post-pandemic world, as well as the complications of governance that may need to be addressed for these technologies to realize their maximum potential. The report:

Describes governance gaps for each of the technologies. These include issues of privacy, liability, cross-border regulatory discrepancies and the potential for misuse by bad actors – such as the recent surge in ransomware attacks enabled by cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or the risk of abuse posed by technologies like “deepfake” videos. 

How can regulatory agencies ensure the unrestricted flow of data necessary for many new technologies to operate robustly and efficiently while still safeguarding user privacy? Is facial recognition technology enough of a boon to police investigations to offset its potential for error and abuse? How vulnerable are IoT devices such as smart speakers and home cameras to hacks that put consumer data at risk?

Explores governance and oversight needs highlighted by the pandemic that should be addressed. These include balancing the need for human supervision of automated technology with the advantages of touchless operations in a postCOVID-19 world or assuaging consumers’ privacy fears surrounding contact-tracing apps.

Profiles innovative government frameworks that may suit these future economic engines and outlines some emerging post-pandemic approaches. Finland, for example, requires private innovators in the transit sector to make certain data standardized and publicly available, which has enabled cities such as Helsinki to create an application that integrates both private and public modes of transport and enables users to plan and book a multimodal trip from start to finish using one interface. 

Countries such as New Zealand have introduced guidelines that incorporate privacy, human rights and ethical concerns into the design of government algorithms. The pandemic has also increased public-private coordination, as in the United Kingdom, which formed a taskforce of pharmaceutical companies, regulators and academics to facilitate the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines.

Details many of the regulatory innovations in technology necessitated by the pandemic and explores whether or not they should become permanent. Regulatory agility, for example, has become increasingly important in the COVID-19 era, as governments ease restrictions to accelerate the development of new treatments and technology – such as autonomous delivery drones – to address the pandemic. In other cases, governments have adjusted regulations based on user feedback or created experimental sandboxes that allow the private sector to test out new technology in a closed environment."

Read the Report : Global Technology Governance Report 2021: Harnessing Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies in a COVID-19 World

Global Technology Governance Report 2021

The emerging technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have a vital role to play as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuild our economies. This report examines some of the most ...

https://fr.weforum.org/reports/global-technology-governance-report-2021