In the ongoing discussion about how much Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact the future of work, the outlook seems bleak. McKinsey & Company estimates that between 400 million and 800 million individuals could be displaced by automation and need to find new jobs by 2030 around the world. Yes, we're on the cusp of a changing workforce, thanks to a number of technological advancements anchored by AI. But, I believe that the best outcome for marketers will be a business environment that complements human ability with technology, rather than eliminates it. In the future I'm planning for, marketers are thriving because we've made the decision to let machines do what they do best, so marketers can do the same, and truly excel in their roles.

Unlike the previous three industrial revolutions (18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries), the 4th will be more decentralized, automated, and controlled interdependently (Qin, Liu, & Grosvenor, 2016). In the first industrial revolution, the factory achieved production primarily through machines powered by water and steam and heavy manpower. In the second, operations became slightly more complexed through machines powered by electricity supported by mass production and division of labour. The third industrial revolution ushered in the use of electronics and information technology, adding more complexity to the production process in making it more automated (Brettel, Friederichsen, Keller, & Rosenberg, 2014; Wolfgang, 2016). Undoubtedly, these three industrial revolutions would have impacted their countries' economies.

The new industrial revolution is a cyber-physical systems revolution. The Internet of Things (IoT) forms a foundation for this cyber-physical systems revolution. It is driving the biggest shift in business and technology since World War II. "Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are physical and engineered systems whose operations are monitored, coordinated, controlled and integrated by a computing and communication core. Just as the internet transformed how humans interact with one another, cyber-physical systems will transform how we interact with the physical world around us."1

Automation is the past, current and next big thing. For a long time, getting robots and software to work for us has been the Holy Grail of business. In theory it makes everything cheaper, more reliable, more powerful and it frees humans up to work on creative projects. Ever since the first industrial revolution, capitalists have looked for ways to extract human labour from the means of production and replace it with smart systems. This, of course, was initially driven by greed.