FIRIC Pioneers New Approaches to Global Governance of Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies

Nested in the inter-disciplinary environment at KAIST, FIRIC centers its activity on (1) monitoring the trends of emerging technologies on a real-time basis, (2) creating long-term foresights on future society and technologies in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and (3) exploring novel approaches to policy and governance issues accompanying the Fourth Industrial Revolution in order to advance inclusive growth.

In collaboration with the World Economic Forum (WEF), FIRIC held a joint roundtable in October 2017 in an attempt to gather multi-stakeholders interested in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and to spark many more discussions with a variety of collaborations expected to follow. The roundtable made remarkable progress, represented in the exchange of a letter of intent between the WEF and KAIST and a collaboration agreement between the WEF Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) and FIRIC on pilot projects such as blockchain (distributed ledger technology) and precision medicine.

FIRIC is continuously seeking to expand its scope of collaboration with various players around the world in order to build a stronger foundation to prepare for the impending wave of changes from the Fourth Industrial Revolution. FIRIC is planning to make a critical contribution to the Korean version of the 4IR and the Future of Jobs and 4IR with WEF as well as various other agents including the National Assembly, government ministries, corporations, and NGOs. Among the upcoming events are a technology exchange meeting with the Technology Mission from Czech Republic on May 30th and a joint meeting with WEF C4IR on June 8th. FIRIC is also in discussion with public research institutes including KISTEP to build collaborative relationships in an attempt to maximize synergy by facilitating exchange of knowledge and human resources regarding the Fourth Industrial Revolution.