Published: - Jan 27, 2019

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La segunda ciudad más grande de Colombia se convertirá en el centro de la cuarta revolución industrial propuesta por el Foro Económico Mundial.

El Foro Económico Mundial, que organiza cada año una reunión de alrededor de 3.000 de las figuras más importantes de la economía mundial en Davos, anunció el año pasado que desplegaría un proyecto conocido como Centro para la Cuarta Red de la Revolución Industrial (CFIR). Ahora, la ciudad de Medellín se ha convertido en una pieza clave en este ambicioso plan.

Leer en español: Medellín: centro del plan maestro de Davos

La iniciativa, que según el foro busca "dar forma al desarrollo y la aplicación de tecnologías emergentes como la inteligencia artificial y el blockchain en beneficio de la humanidad", tiene como objetivo identificar ciudades con las condiciones ideales para "diseñar, probar y refinar" el Uso de estas tecnologías.

La sede principal de CFIR se encuentra en San Francisco, cerca del epicentro tecnológico de Silicon Valley. Posteriormente, en 2018, se expandieron a Tokio, Mumbai y Beijing para expandir el proyecto a Asia. Este año, Medellín se agregó como la ciudad representativa de América Latina, junto con las ciudades de Israel, Noruega y los Emiratos Árabes Unidos.

The announcement was made in the alpine town of Davos, after the meeting of the president of Colombia Ivan Duque with the founder and president of the World Economic Forum, Karl Schwab.

Also read: World Economic Forum 2019: Bolsonaro in the spotlight

What changes will bring?

The Regional Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, headquarters of the initiative of the World Economic Forum for Colombia and Latin America, will arrive in Medellin. Here, research will focus on the fields of robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, but also, the political and economic field will be studied to identify the way in which these advances can solve real problems of Colombian society.

The innovation, dynamism, and recognition that has developed in Medellin during the last years have been, according to Schwab, the main reasons why Medellin was chosen as the first center in Latin America and among the first in the world.

For Iván Duque, who went to Davos with the desire to promote foreign investment in the country, the recognition of the World Economic Forum in Medellín is undoubtedly an important step to advance his agenda. Securing Colombia's image as a safe and prosperous destination for investment is paramount for its administration, and this recognition, by the organizer of the event itself, marks a good start.

"We also see this as an opportunity to adapt, in terms of education, regulation and business development, in order to create a better environment for the development of these new technologies," Duque told the media.

What does the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' refer to?

The World Economic Forum, in the white paper that gives rise to the initiative that Medellín is now part of, determined that this 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' is defined by the transformations caused by technologies such as artificial intelligence, the blockchain, drones, and precision medicine.

According to the document, the implementation of these technologies, even in their infancy, brings ethical dilemmas that make a gradual, calculated and tested adoption in society preferable. The research that will be carried out in the different centers of the initiative responds precisely to this need.

This, it should be noted, is the latest in a series of industrial revolutions that have shaped modernity. The first came with steam engines and managed to mechanize the production of goods. The second brought innovations such as electricity, which changed not only production systems but also communication and transportation. The third, the most recent, came with the advance in the information sciences, particularly the internet, which generated irreversible changes in the industry.

LatinAmerican Post | Pedro Bernal