Frankenstein and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR): Ethics and Human Rights Considerations

Abstract

The “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) is an expression, which is now used to frame and assess the impact of emergent technologies in the 21st century. The rapidity and quantity of changes that are occurring will result in socio-economic and also political upheavals as there are likely to be increasing shifts in power dynamics, wealth acquisition, and information. This is clearly a foremost transformation in society, and especially the IT worldview demands appropriate ethical insights, actions and sanction. If we are conversant about the vicissitudes and the rate of their occurrence, society will be better placed to try to ensure that advances in technology will benefit all stakeholders. How organisations are likely to respond to the 4IR and its ethical challenges, especially human rights’, is critical. It is certain that management in for example a hotel will need to understand and consider which technologies may affect them and whether there are opportunities or threats to be faced through the 4IR. Drawing on scholarship in an extensive range of disciplines, this article examines the 4IR and how it will impact on human rights and be accommodated within existing legal frameworks pertaining to labour issues. The study has been based on an interpretivistic paradigm which is phenomenological, and in which reality is socially constructed, and thus consists of multiple realities. There is thus a hermeneutic and subjective understanding and interpretation of texts. Epistemologically considered, knowledge is viewed as subjective and relative, and many truths and ‘knowledges’ exist depending on one’s perspective and social context. Axiologically then, this conceptual literature study is valuable as it reflects human subjectivities relating to and deliberating upon the foremost features of the 4IR and the various challenges posed by both ethical and human rights perspectives.