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After the pandemic comes the fourth industrial revolution

How has the pandemic affected the fourth industrial revolution and the drive to new technology? Lucy Ingham writes for the Financial Services Faculty.

Remember in the world before the pandemic, how futurists and techies would extol the virtues of the fourth industrial revolution and how it was set to change our lives? Back then, it often seemed far removed from day-to-day work; a picture of a future that was still some way ahead, and that for many seemed too far off to be entirely real. 

But the Covid-19 pandemic has caused dramatic change for all of us – not least in the way we work. From Zoom calls to AI-driven tools, we’ve let technologies that are essentially the first stage of the fourth industrial revolution into our lives to an extent that would have been unthinkable just a year ago.