Aquarium: augmented knowledge and wisdom in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Abstract

The first two decades of the 21st century witnessed the emergence of technical and technological solutions that have enabled digital transformations in the global economy. Registration of unstructured data and bringing them together into large datasets have enriched the cognitive process comprising traditional generation of human knowledge and the digital transformation of data into information and then into industrial knowledge. As a result, we obtain augmented knowledge. Yet,
robots and bots (i.e., a device which, unlike a robot, is not connected with mechanisms and other peripheral devices) fuelled by technologies collectively referred to as artificial intelligence, primarily by the machine learning technology, are not able to develop wisdom. That is because robots and bots operate only within two dimensions: perception and context, while a human being has his/her autonomous and subjectively defined axiological system, which shapes his/her capacity to make value judgements and generate wisdom. This system is the third dimension in the aquarium with the glass front wall and the remaining three walls carved in stone. It provides stability ensured by a solid foundation of an axiological system that is thousands of years old and has been approved by the entire global community.
Subjectivity of value judgements made by individuals and social groups produces a great variety of assessments of available knowledge. That is evidenced, inter alia, by decisions about the use of nuclear energy or decisions regulating free access to personal data and interfering with private life.