[In-Depth Look] A Skewed Perspective on Technological Progress

Kim Dong-chul, Ph.D. in EngineeringㆍOutside Director of Ubicare

These days, psychological terms are being used everywhere as if there is a flood of psychology. Among them, an interesting concept is 'confirmation bias.' Simply put, people only hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see. One might think, "That's not me," but confirmation bias occurs instinctively and unconsciously, making it difficult to escape from. Let's turn the initial concept into a logical negation: not hearing what one wants to hear and not seeing what one wants to see. This is especially hard to endure when one is young. To overcome confirmation bias, one must constantly question their own thoughts. Achieving an all-encompassing objective perspective requires a considerable level of training.

When confirmation bias is severe, people may fail to notice even clear evidence right before their eyes. Once someone starts doubting another, they only see suspicious circumstances. Conversely, when trusting a fraudster, despite many odd aspects, people listen only to the parts they want to believe and eventually get scammed. Such confirmation bias is not only present in personal matters but also seems related to perspectives on social phenomena.

What have humans achieved through the Industrial Revolution? The world, entering the era of mass production, underwent tremendous economic and political changes. With the development of internal combustion engines and the spread of automobiles, the world became smaller.

The result of a series of industrial revolutions is the reduction of time. We live in a world where the time required for production is shortened, travel time is reduced, and if curious about something, we can find out instantly through searches. Time itself is not passing faster, but the maximization of efficiency created by humans has reduced the unit time needed to complete tasks.

Moreover, humans have created and named things that did not originally exist and have improved them. From the perspective of the subjects of the Industrial Revolution, which are not humans, do they also have confirmation bias? Any technology, with human intervention, creates faster alternatives and is destined to disappear eventually. Therefore, there can be confirmation bias that ignores new technologies. Technologies themselves do not want to die. By ignoring the advantages of new technologies and exaggerating their problems, outdated technologies try to justify their existence. For this reason, for a while, two technologies inevitably coexist. During such times, human intervention acts as a remedy to overcome the confirmation bias inherent in technology, eventually leading to the world of new technology.

The phenomenon of time reduction now creates a fixed idea that faster is better, generating another obsession that things must become faster. This is the case with those who claim we are in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In past industrial revolutions, a distinct single technology was characteristically distinguished. However, now, even when all technologies named ICBM (IoT, Cloud, Big Data, Mobile) are applied, it is still called the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It remains uncertain what kind of technology will emerge from the combination of these. It may be a coexistence period with old technologies. Perhaps it is a period like a 'phantom pregnancy' created by human obsession with time.

When new technology is developed, developers convey what the public wants to hear in the most dramatic way possible, stimulating the public's confirmation bias. Scenes where a robot climbs stairs, shakes hands with the developer, and says "The new technology is right" create an image of the perfect completion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, the actual robot is merely a specialized device made just for that scene. Artificial intelligence that eerily guesses what a person mistakenly said is actually a rigged Go-Stop game. It is a time when a critical reflection on a true industrial revolution that changes the world, escaping momentarily from the confirmation bias of the Industrial Revolution, is necessary.