COVID-19 pandemic brought humanity closer to the next stage of technological revolution

The outbreak of the pandemic posed some serious challenges to the world that required the concentration of many people’s efforts and the use of the latest technologies. This has led to powerful technological breakthroughs, particularly in medicine. HSE University researchers Leonid Grinin, Anton Grinin, and Andrey Korotayev published a paper in which they assessed the impact of COVID-19 on social development. The authors concluded that the pandemic will considerably accelerate humanity’s transition to a new stage of development, but can also cause significant social strain.

The researchers believe that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the start of the final phase of theCybernetic Revolution. This is due to the growing need for development in such areas as medical, additive, nano-, bio-, robotics,info-, and cognitive technologies—fields the authors call ‘MANBRIC’. However, technological revolution always leads to drastic socio-political changes. The paper COVID-19 Pandemic as a Trigger for the Acceleration of the Cybernetic Revolution, Transition from E-Government to E-State, and Change in Social Relations discusses two key changes in this process: the distribution and development of socio-technical self-regulating systems, and the movement towards an e-state.

The socio-political and economic role of medicine grew rapidly during the fight against COVID-19 (although it had been growing before the pandemic as well due to the ageing global population).

It considerably changed states’ attitude to medical services and their funding, including a serious redistribution of public and state funds in favour of medicine, which led to additional active technological growth in this sphere.

The development of vaccines motivated innovative breakthroughs in biotech and genetic engineering. Isolation and social distancing requirements boosted the implementation of online technologies in such areas as remote medical aid, psychological counselling, and biometrics (including contactless biometrics).

The fight with COVID-19 caused a deficit of medical personnel. Medical robots, such as those used in robotic surgery, can be helpful in such a situation. Robotics and remote medical technologies can also help ensure the safety of medical personnel.

The pandemic has spurred development in fields such as additive technologies and nanotechnologies.

The researchers say that the development of information technologies and artificial intelligence have impacted social relations in recent decades. This impact can be observed in many areas, such as employment structure, the disappearance of some professions, and the emergence of others. The opportunities for remote studies, jobs and services (including healthcare) are also expanding rapidly.

In addition, a lot has changed in terms of information creation, distribution, transformation, and analysis, as well as the control of information flows. This new online power structure has serious consequences for democracy. The researchers believe that today’s AI capabilities already pose a systemic danger to society and human rights. There is a growing problem concerning the use of AI to invade people’s private lives. The authors stress that information confidentiality is a value that shapes both society and individual identities.

Andrey Korotayev, Leading Research Fellow at the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences

‘The acceleration of the technological wave and dynamic social transformation may be rather painful and cause strong social and political tension, protests and conflicts, and decreased trust in governments. It is necessary to develop new laws that optimize socio-technological interference in people’s lives, particularly intrusion into their private lives. We have to go through a difficult trial-and-error process in order to come closer to balancing technological processes and social life.’

The urgent need to reinforce safety measures during the pandemic aggravated the problem, but also demonstrated that further development in this area would lead to qualitative changes. New AI-based combined technological systems can collect, store and analyse information on billions of people. The purpose of such systems is the administrative, legal, social and even political regulation of the behaviour of individuals, social groups and society at large.

There is a trend towards delegating more and more work to sociotechnical systems to perform tasks that were previously the responsibility of the authorities, including facial recognition, traffic control, the issuing of fines, online registration, paperwork and more.

The researchers believe that a new type of administration—an administration of the future—is evolving: the e-state.

This will lead to a new ‘communicative circuit’ in the management of society, changing the framework of relations between society’s core and its periphery.