Strolling down the picturesque paths surrounding Felixstowe, a port town on the heath-speckled coast of southern England, it's hard to imagine that such a peaceful-looking place has played host to events that disrupted the global logistics industry. The connected and interdependent nature of our modern economy means that when port workers in Felixstowe went on an eight-day strike in September 2022, it caused major issues around the world. What's more, "once-in-a-generation" events are becoming the new normal, producing even greater upheaval and begging the question: "Can supply chain technology come to the rescue?" The last three years have redefined what global supply chain disruption means. The COVID-19 pandemic, Suez Canal blockage and port congestion have brought chaos to many companies' logistics operations.

In this Hyperautomation interview, Acceleration Economy analyst Toni Witt speaks with David Vivancos, author, AI executive advisor, and deep learning lead at MindBigData, a dataset made up of EEG brain signals. The two discuss Vivancos' work in the field of AI and ML, the future of AI, and the difference between digitization and automation. Toni argues that machine learning (ML) tends to give rise to more jobs than it takes away. He references how the inception of the printing press gave rise to mass media production. He asks Vivancos his thoughts on the dynamic, to which he replied that he feels that we will all be jobless someday.

The Industrial revolution 4.0 marks the birth of digitization and automation of the manufacturing processes called – 'Smart Manufacturing.' Industry 4.0 however, is not a new technology and nor it is a business discipline, but a new approach called'Smart Manufacturing' which is fully integrated, collaborating manufacturing systems that respond in real-time to meet the changing conditions and demands in the factory, in the supply network and customer needs. This new approach will help the manufacturers to achieve the results that weren't possible a decade ago. Smart Factory which is at the heart of the Industry 4.0 will take on board the Information and communication technology (ICT) for the evolution in the production line and supply chain that integrates a much higher level of digitization and automation. It simply refers to machines using self-configuration, self-optimisation, and artificial intelligence to perform complex tasks for delivering vastly superior, high quality, and cost-efficient goods and services. The Smart Factory can also be defined as a factory where the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) communicates over the IoT and assist machines and people in the execution of their tasks.

Digitization and automation are ever-growing topics in relation to the workplace. A famous Oxford study on the future of employment from 2013 estimated that up to 47% of American jobs may be automated by 2035; a brand new McKinsey study shows that current technologies could automate 45 percent of job activities; and the business mantra goes that if you can digitize, you should digitize to gain a competitive advantage. But how do we, as human beings, really feel about potentially working with or even for AIs, and what impact do we think they will have on our workplace? A recent study conducted in the US, UK and Denmark explores people's openness towards working with and for "unbiased computer programs"--defined as "a software robot that makes decisions or proposals for decisions based on data from HR, financial or market information. The software robot is unbiased, i.e. it is not affected by the personal, social and cultural bias that influence human decision making, but balances all input only based on the data."