Technology Matters
We haven’t reached the singularity yet, but our society and our economy is getting close. “Singularity” refers to point at which the way we do things becomes so complex and interconnected that evolves beyond our ability to control the change.
There’s a consensus that the global economy and social order will reach this singularity at some point, likely in this century, maybe soon, as technology permeates every aspect of life. It sounds daunting, even a bit frightening, but it’s not necessarily bad.
In fact, technology can help build, repair, maintain and improve our critical infrastructure. The digital revolution can make supply chains work better. To achieve this, we need to understand two things: the role that technology already plays in critical infrastructure, and what technology can do in the future.
The term “singularity” was first used in 1873 by a Scottish mathematician named James Clerk Maxwell. He was looking at the laws of electricity, six years before Thomas Edison turned on the first incandescent lightbulb and decades before Einstein’s theories advanced our understanding of physics and the universe.
Maxwell’s singularity referred to the idea that arbitrarily small changes, commonly unpredictably, can lead to arbitrarily large effects, in any process. Doing the same thing every time under the same conditions will always bring the same result, but the same conditions rarely happen, if ever. So everything is nearly always different, and everything is connected.
That’s what we need to know about how critical infrastructure and the supply chain functions. It’s not just a matter of ordering things, expecting to arrive and fixing things up when they don’t. Things keep happening and they will keep happening. And getting technology to work with this situation instead of reacting to it will be key.
Maxwell’s singularity referred to the idea that arbitrarily small changes, commonly unpredictably, can lead to arbitrarily large effects, in any process. Doing the same thing every time under the same conditions will always bring the same result, but the same conditions rarely happen, if ever.
Understanding the Singularity
Understanding singularity is vital for the 21st century. Understanding technology’s role in critical infrastructure and supply chain management is a lesson we’re learning at warp speed, in real time. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning permeate our lives and work, and at the same time complicated events such as the pandemic and climate change keep throwing the world into unpredictable situations.
AI is to the 21st century what the steam engine and electricity were to the 19th. Sensor-based systems that collect and share data and store it in the computer cloud are embedded into everything from toasters to trucks loaded with shipping containers delivering key raw materials and finished goods.
Everything is connected, yet the connections are so intricate and growing so fast that they can lead to unpredictable results. Add to this events – whether it’s a trade dispute, a pandemic or a wild, climate-induced storm – and infrastructure and the supply chain will experience surprises.
The problems can be far more complicated than having to wait two extra months to get a washing machine or a fridge. In the autumn of 2021, for example, ships full of goods waited offshore from the Port of Los Angeles, when there weren’t enough workers to unload them, affecting people in unpredictable ways.
Car and truck manufacturers had to wait for the microchips that go into their vehicles, leading to a shortage of new cars available to dealers. That could mean sending home workers. Meanwhile, music schools could not get pianos they ordered because these instruments, made overseas, were stuck on the ships in containers. Teachers who had hoped to resume face-to-face piano lessons after the pandemic couldn’t teach. Their students couldn’t learn.
Understanding technology’s role in critical infrastructure and supply chain management is a lesson we’re learning at warp speed, in real time
Overcoming Supply Chain Roadblocks
As everyone has learned since the pandemic began in March 2020, there are all kinds of roadblocks in supply chains. Critical infrastructure wasn’t keeping up. Some of these problems will be alleviated as the pandemic subsides; some will improve because of what we have learned since COVID-19 began; that a massive, concentrated effort such as the drive to develop, test and deliver vaccines can work if everyone works together.
Some problems will be addressed as well by the trillions of dollars about to be deployed on upgrading basic infrastructure, from bridges and buildings to broadband. The biggest gains though, may come if we learn to understand singularity and harness the technology that is spreading through every aspect of our economy and our lives.
Understanding the emerging AI singularity means seeing business itself as a giant machine. From the time when somebody asks for a quote or an estimate to when a product actually gets turned into an order and ships, all of that giant mechanism is a big data flywheel.
This big machine can be leveraged for higher efficiency and better output. Speeding up a particular process or improving one part – for example, upgrading software or fixing a potholed road – can be helpful, but it’s only one part, the unpredictable thing that affects the singularity. Looking at how the whole process is working as a system is more instructive – that’s manufacturing in the 21st century.
We're learning to be at the cutting edge of this thinking within our own sector, the forging industry. We’re becoming a digital manufacturer – deploying big data and technology affects not only our own operation but also the networks of suppliers and customers that work with us.
The biggest gains may come if we learn to understand singularity and harness the technology that is spreading through every aspect of our economy and our lives.
AI and the Supply Chain
It can take time to adapt to an AI-infused supply chain and infrastructure. For example, Ontario’s nuclear sector is undergoing a major refurbishment; using AI from the beginning to manage the complex inputs and outputs of all the materials and decisions that go into a project of this magnitude from the beginning would have compelled many suppliers to upgrade as the same time as the work was being started. As the singularity approaches, change needs to happen fast.
It helps if key elements of data are shared by different players in a supply chain. For example, in the forging industry if all the equipment within a manufacturing facility uses real-time data indicating what materials are on hand, what’s coming and what is being used up, it’s easier to see everything that’s needed to be known about an order for a multi-million dollar product. The decision makers who order the machines and oversee their delivery and installation can see at any moment what temperature the furnace is at, the speeds and feeds and RPMs on the machines doing the building.
Even better, as that data is being collected, it's being stored, and the manufacturer is building a data set. AI can use this data set to to build a big feedback loop that allows higher efficiency across the business. It’s systems thinking being used to harness singularity, so the unpredictable can be predicted.
In the forging industry if all the equipment within a manufacturing facility uses real-time data indicating what materials are on hand, what’s coming and what is being used up, it’s easier to see everything that’s needed to be known about an order for a multi-million dollar product.
Managing the Fourth Industrial Revolution
This is really what the Fourth Industrial Revolution – the Digital Age – is about. But harnessing singularity to build this Industry 4.0 will require producers, logistics players, industrial buyers and users and even ordinary consumers to cooperate.
This is challenging because we’re not starting from scratch. The 21st century’s industry is full of plants and equipment from the 20th; moving to the future requires those invested in the past and present to accept that joining the Digital Age has costs. But there's long-term value in collecting the data. The costs now will pay off, as the data set grows and industries gain more and more ability to use the predictive nature of artificial intelligence.
All this requires choice. One key choice for everyone who participates in the economy to decide whether to be compelled to embrace the digital world or to move more quickly and get ahead. This choice slips away every day that it is not made by the participants. Those who move more slowly now face being compelled to move faster later whether they like it or not. Somewhere between now and the end of this decade, businesses that are not 21st century digital enterprises will be dinosaurs.
Embracing technology along the whole supply chain brings other challenges, of course. Questions such as who ultimately controls data in the cloud, what countries regulate it, who polices data and protects and insures against cyberbreaches and ransomware attacks are all daunting and there aren’t easy solutions.
What happens when things go sideways in a supply chain and the technology is so diversified and sophisticated that no one has an easy answer? Is the Canadian government up to managing this kind of situation? Is anyone?
This is really what the Fourth Industrial Revolution – the Digital Age – is about. But harnessing singularity to build this Industry 4.0 will require producers, logistics players, industrial buyers and users and even ordinary consumers to cooperate.
The Possibilities
Addressing these kinds of problems isn’t impossible, it’s just difficult. That just means it’s more important than ever to understand the growing role of technology and AI and the benefits.
The pandemic has been a mountainous challenge and the climate emergency is one of the biggest and most difficult problems the world has ever faced. AI can help if we deploy it to build a more smooth-running critical infrastructure. Solving big problems often requires concession and sacrifice; for example, some businesses deploying AI may have to share commercially sensitive data more than they do now, and cybersecurity is going to keep costing more.
Learning the lessons from the pandemic that apply to critical infrastructure appears to be happening slowly in Canada, though there are signs that it is happening. In the United States awareness of what’s needed for a post-pandemic supply chain may be stronger, if one filters out the noise and rhetoric of day-to day politics.
Voices within the U.S. Defense Department, for example are calling for more use of open source architecture in development and deployment of equipment. Open source means that manufacturers and users aren’t bound by closed intellectual property systems; this gives users including the Pentagon more flexibility in how to amend or add to the IP or adapt if for other uses.
Open source data architecture also makes it easier to move fast, which is ever more important in a singularity-driven world.
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution could be more intense than its three predecessors in terms of scope, scale and speed,” writes Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, in his book Value(s).
“Rapid improvements in computing power, the greater availability of big data and advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning all mean smarter machines are already replacing a broader range of human activities than before … New technologies may increasingly provide intelligence, sensory perception and reasoning that previously only human labour could provide,” Carney says.
The nature of nearly every job is changing, and that applies to the job of understanding and improving critical infrastructure. That’s why learning how to get AI to work for us is critical to critical infrastructure in the 21st century.
If we’ve learned anything in our recent experience and managing the excesses of a worldwide pandemic, it’s that we need to move fast. We’ve learned too, that we can do it.
Robert Dimitrieff is President of Patriot Forge Co. and Niagara Energy Products.
The nature of nearly every job is changing, and that applies to the job of understanding and improving critical infrastructure. That’s why learning how to get AI to work for us is critical to critical infrastructure in the 21st century.
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Robert Dimitrieff
As President of Patriot Forge Co. and Niagara Energy Products, Robert Dimitrieff is in a unique position to share insights into the many ways Canada’s advanced manufacturing industry is building a solid foundation on which Canada’s economy can grow – locally, provincially, and nationally.
Robert provides relevant and real-world perspectives on how issues like tariffs, taxes, and economic policy can help or hinder the progress being made by advanced manufacturers. Most recently, he’s worked closely with government policy-makers and has spoken to industry and business groups on the topics of trade and tariffs.