The Human Security Implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in East Asia

This article looks at emerging threats to human security in East Asia posed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), defined here as emerging business models and techniques that leverage automation, AI (artificial intelligence), and the accelerating fusion of bodies with digital and material technologies. Although this phenomenon is celebrated for creating new sources of value and innovation, it also constitutes a serious threat because its key processes generate new forms of inequality and potentially undermine human dignity and agency. Human security is an important concept for preemptively analyzing these emerging socioeconomic changes and considering countermeasures. The article concludes by briefly proposing a new mode of bottom-up human security advocacy focused on the participatory design and implementation of technological systems to help build resilience across the region.