The rise of artificial intelligence and robots in the 4th Industrial Revolution: implications for future South African job creation

Abstract

The world is becoming one. Globalisation is slowly becoming the leading figure in the interaction and integration of companies, governments, and people of different nations. In this process, technology, products, and information are all spread at a more extremely faster pace more than ever imagined in centuries. Realistically, there are new developments which are transforming the way people live, work and relate to one another in South Africa. This is shaped by the current and developing environment composing of disruptive technologies and trends such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to analyse the implications of the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution (4th IR) on the African National Congress (ANC)-led South Africa’s future youth employment trends. As research that is conducted on the African soil for the benefit of Africans, we adopted Afrocentricity as a theory to decolonise South Africa’s education system and also to unpack the realities and myths surrounding 4th IR within the context of South Africa. The central argument which also serves as the principal objective in this article remains that the 4IR is an incoming worst reality. To fully realise this, we relied on document review and thematic content analysis.