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Along with 4IR comes Society 5.0 in which people’s lives are made more comfortable and sustainable by continuously creating new value adds and services in age old industries [7]. In his book “Society 5.0: We and I”, Dr Miguel Goede describes the emergence of the new era of connectedness as well as the difference between the previous era’s mindset of “I” and the new developing mindset of “we” that characterises Society 5.0. Describing “we” and “I” as mindsets he states that:

“We” cares and “I” does not. “We” gives but “I” takes. “We” is abundance. “I” is scarcity. “We” pays taxes and “I” tries to evade taxes. “We” loves, and “I” loves only himself. “We” is open and “I” is closed. “We” are family. “I” is alone. “We” is sustainable and “I” is not” [8 p. 9].

“Almost all the problems we face nowadays are complex, interconnected, contradictory, located in an uncertain environment and embedded in landscapes that are rapidly changing” according to Sardar (2010:183). Over and above the use of nuclear or biological weapons, potential risks are associated with emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, geoengineering, and nanotechnology (Baum, 2015). Unlike the threats of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction, however, novel technologies such as genetics, nanotechnology and robotics (GNR) do not require large-scale activities to pose threats to humankind, but only require knowledge, posing the threat of knowledge-enabled mass destruction, “amplified by the power of self-replication” (Joy, 2000:1).

How does one address such threats? To do so, a choice must be made in terms of what scientific methodology to use, and a definition is required, as to what it means to ‘address’ such threats. Given the almost unimaginable uncertainties associated with technological advancement and its consequences (Vinge, 1993; Szerszynski, Kearnes, Macnaghten, Owen, & Stilgoe, 2013; Bostrom, 2017; Tegmark, 2017), and therefore the need for responsible innovation (Grunwald, 2011; Stilgoe, Owen, & Macnaghten, 2013), this paper takes recourse to the approach of future studies to develop a theoretical framework relating to how to prepare for such scenarios. In doing so, this paper also seeks to advance the argument that only through improvements in the capacity of humans to manage technology, can human agency survive into a technological future. This argument therefore draws from Tegmark’s (2017) logic, that given uncertainty about technological outcomes, an important goal is to immediately undertake technology-safety research, and make this research mainstream. As an organising framework, literature is used to derive six primary technological threats. These threats are used to guide and anchor discussions and arguments throughout different sections of the paper.

THE current fourth industrial revolution has been enabled through the Internet of Things (IoT) in association with other emerging technologies, most notably cyber-physical sys- tems (CPS). CPS help bridge the gap between manufacturing and information technologies and give birth to the smart factory. This technological evolution ushers in the Industry 4.0 as a prime agenda of the High-Tech Strategy 2020 Action Plan taken by the government of Germany, the Industrial Internet from General Electric in the USA, and the Internet+ from China. Re- cently, in January 2021, the European Commission released the first edition of their policy brief on Industry 5.0 [1]. One of the most important paradigmatic transitions characterizing Industry 5.0 is the shift of focus from technology-driven progress to a thoroughly human-centric approach. An important prerequisite for Industry 5.0 is that technology serves people, rather than the other way around, by expanding the capabilities of workers (up- skilling and re-skilling) with innovative technological means such as virtual/augmented reality (V/AR) tools, mobile robots, and exoskeletons. Note that while Industry 4.0 implies minimum human intervention due to automation, Industry 5.0 prioritizes augmentation of the human over automation of the human.

It is interesting to note that in [1], the authors also elaborate on the relation between the concepts of Industry 5.0 and Society 5.0. While both concepts are related in the sense that they refer to a fundamental shift of our society and economy towards a new paradigm, Society 5.0 is not restricted to the manufacturing sector but addresses larger social challenges based on the integration of physical and virtual spaces.

We face global existential threats. From climate change to health emergencies, we see and feel them now. And these threats come with stark, geopolitical challenges which in turn have three things in common. First, they cross national boundaries. Second, no country or sector will manage them in isolation. And third, managing and reversing them will rest heavily on applying breakthroughs in science and technology.

In order to succeed, we will need to maintain a global perspective and collectively share, understand, and apply the latest insights and evidence. We have the chance to unlock the benefits of science and technology and channel the opportunities that flow from them. That potential is the starting point for science diplomacy.

By the mid-twenty-first century the world’s cities will be home to approaching eight billion inhabitants and will carpet an area of the planet’s surface the size of China. Several megacities will have 20, 30, and even 40 million people. The largest city on Earth will be Guangzhou-Shenzen, which already has an estimated 120 million citizens crowded into in its greater metropolitan area (Vidal 2010). By the 2050s these colossal conurbations will absorb 4.5 trillion tonnes of fresh water for domestic, urban and industrial purposes, and consume around 75 billion tonnes of metals, materials and resources every year. Their very existence will depend on the preservation of a precarious balance between the essential resources they need for survival and growth—and the capacity of the Earth to supply them. Furthermore, they will generate equally phenomenal volumes of waste, reaching an alpine 2.2 billion tonnes by 2025 (World Bank)—an average of six million tonnes a day—and probably doubling again by the 2050s, in line with economic demand for material goods and food. In the words of the Global Footprint Network “The global effort for sustainability will be won, or lost, in the world’s cities” (Global Footprint Network 2015). As we have seen in the case of food (Chap. 7), these giant cities exist on a razor’s edge, at risk of resource crises for which none of them are fully-prepared. They are potential targets for weapons of mass destruction (Chap. 4). They are humicribs for emerging pandemic diseases, breeding grounds for crime and hatcheries for unregulated advances in biotechnology, nanoscience, chemistry and artificial intelligence. Beyond all this, however, they are also the places where human minds are joining at lightspeed to share knowledge, wisdom and craft solutions to the multiple challenges we face. For good or ill, in cities is the future of civilisation written. They cradle both our hopes and fears. Urban Perils The Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo is a harbinger of the challenges which lie ahead for Homo urbanus, Urban Human. In a land which the New York Times once dubbed “the Saudi Arabia of water” because its rivers and lakes held an eighth of all the fresh water on the planet, Brazil’s largest and wealthiest city and its 20 million inhabitants were almost brought to their knees by a one-in-a-hundred-year drought (Romero 2015). It wasn’t simply a drought, however, but rather a complex interplay of factors driven by human overexploitation of the surrounding landscape, pollution of the planetary atmosphere and biosphere, corruption of officialdom, mismanagement and governance failure. In other words, the sort of mess that potentially confronts most of the world’s megacities. In the case of Sao Paulo, climate change was implicated by scientists in making a bad drought worse. This was compounded by overclearing in the Amazon basin, which is thought to have reduced local hydrological cycling so that less water was respired by forests and less rain then fell locally. This reduced infiltration into the landscape and inflow to river systems which land-clearing had engorged with sediment and nutrients. Rivers running through the city were rendered undrinkable from the industrial pollutants and waste dumped in them. The Sao Paulo water network leaked badly, was subject to corruption, mismanagement and pilfering bordering on pillage. Government plans to build more dams arrived 20 years too late. “Only a deluge can save São Paulo,” Vicente Andreu, the chief of Brazil’s National Water Agency (ANA) told The Economist magazine (The Economist 2014). Depopulation, voluntary or forced, loomed as a stark option, officials admitted. Although the drought eased in 2016, water scarcity remained a shadow over the region’s future. Sao Paulo is far from alone: many of the world’s great cities face the spectre of thirst. The same El Nino event also struck the great cities of California, leading urban planners—like others all over the world—to turn to desalination of seawater, using electricity and reverse osmosis filtration (Talbot 2014). This kneejerk response to unanticipated water scarcity echoed the Australian experience where, following the ‘Millennium Drought’ desalination plants were producing 460 gigalitres of water a year in four major cities (National Water Commission 2008)—only to be mothballed a few years later when the dry eased. By the early 2010s there were more than 17,000 desalination plants in 150 countries worldwide, churning out more than 80 gigalitres (21 billion US gallons) of water per day, according to the International Desalination Association (Brown 2015). Most of these plants were powered by fossil fuels which supply the immense amount of energy needed to push saline water through a membrane filter and remove the salt. Ironically, by releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, desalination exacerbates global warming and so helps to increase the probability of fiercer and more frequent droughts. It thus defeats its own purpose by reducing natural water supplies. A similar irony applies to the city of Los Angeles which attempted to protect its dwindling water storages from evaporation by covering them with millions of plastic balls (Howard 2015)—thus using petrochemicals in an attempt to solve a problem originally caused by … petrochemicals. These examples illustrate the ‘wicked’ character of the complex challenges now facing the world’s cities—where poorly-conceived ‘solutions’ may only land the metropolis, and the planet, in deeper trouble that it was before. This is a direct consequence of the pressure of demands from our swollen population outrunning the natural capacity of the Earth to supply them, and short-sighted or corrupt local politics leading to ‘bandaid’ solutions that don’t work or cause more trouble in the long run. Other forms of increasing urban vulnerability include: storm damage, sea level rise, flooding and fire resulting from climate change or geotectonic forces; governance failure, civic unrest and civil war exemplified in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria over the 2010s; disruption of oil supplies and consequent failure of food supplies; worsening urban health problems due to the rapid spread of pandemic diseases and industrial pollution and still ill-defined but real threats posed by the rise of machine intelligence and nanoscience (Gencer 2013). The issue was highlighted early in the present millennium by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who wrote: Communities will always face natural hazards, but today’s disasters are often generated by, or at least exacerbated by, human activities… At no time in human history have so many people lived in cities clustered around seismically active areas. Destitution and demographic pressure have led more people than ever before to live in flood plains or in areas prone to landslides. Poor land-use planning; environmental management; and a lack of regulatory mechanisms both increase the risk and exacerbate the effects of disasters (Annan 2003). These factors are a warning sign for the real possibility of megacity collapses within coming decades. With the universal spread of smart phones, the consequences will be vividly displayed in real time on news bulletins and social media. Unlike historic calamities, the whole world will have a virtual ringside seat as future urban nightmares unfold.

As human beings have evolved, they have discovered new means of communication, leading to enhanced coordination that in turn gave rise to social systems. This evolution has necessitated the governance of these societies, spawning various legal and governance structures. Following the advent of the internet and the digital revolution, which introduced modern concepts of globalization and a shared global community, we are witnessing a paradigm shift towards decentralized systems and AI. These technologies are revolutionizing how humans communicate, coordinate, and cooperate, thereby creating a need to leverage these advancements for new methods of self-organization and collaboration. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) could potentially serve as this new framework for governance in an age characterized by decentralization and functional autonomy. Therefore, DAOs could become a crucial and significant component of future social and governance structures

The Governance Revolution

Intellectual property (IP) provides us a front row seat to the cutting-edge of technology. The legal questions arising at this frontier are often as complex as the resulting inventions and creative works. The Federal Circuit’s recent Thaler v. Vidal opinion clarifies an important patent law concept, specifically whether an artificial intelligence (AI) may be listed as the inventor of a patent. The current industrial revolution powered by blockchain and crypto continues to raise issues about how it meshes with our current IP legal framework.

AI and Apes Are So Far Losing the Fight

1. The emergence of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are blockchain-native, decentralized organizations that are collectively owned and managed by their members via smart contracts. DAOs represent a new organizational model that has the potential to fundamentally change how organizations operate. Organizational innovations associated with the rise of DAOs are enabled by a novel technological infrastructure. Blockchain technology serves as the platform on which DAOs are set up. Blockchain technology refers to a distributed and digital ledger that records transactions in a transparent and immutable way (Nakamoto, 2008). The advent of blockchain technology had a major impact on the business world and is one of the major pillars of the movement towards a decentralized economy (e.g., Yermack, 2017; Chawla, 2020; Sydow et al., 2020) and a decentralized financial system (e.g., Chen and Bellavitis, 2020; Cumming et al., 2022), partly driven by new ventures’ tokenizations through initial coin offerings (ICOs) (e.g., Bellavitis et al., 2021; Fisch, 2019).

The world of cryptography, and in protecting users and systems, has moved on so fast in the past year. Our weak systems, such as with Logjam and FREAK, have quickly been replaced, and where browsers just won't talk to systems which use weak encryption, such as for 1,024-bit Diffie-Hellman key exchange or with 512-bit RSA key exchange. At present, only Microsoft Internet Explorer allows for weak key exchange for the SSL connection, and where Chrome and Firefox just won't talk to systems which have weak methods. With talk around backdoors and key escrow, the browsers have pushed the industry along faster than anyone would imagine.

So just when we thought we had secured the Internet, and where it had moved on from Diffie-Hellman and 512-bit RSA key exchange methods to Elliptic Curve methods of exchanging session keys for HTTPs, we find our that someone thinks they have a patent around the methods of key creation using elliptic curve encryption. So this time it's not law enforcement looking for a back-door or weak encryption - it is possibly a patent troll.

The pharmaceutical industry certainly doesn’t suffer from a lack of detractors. Many claim that “Big-Pharma” is simply in it for the money, and that they'll push new drugs simply to boost profits, even if the drugs aren't appropriate for the consumer. Others argue that we should eliminate intellectual property protections to get lower price drugs, since there isn’t really that much innovation that has a real impact happening anyway. However, before throwing the pharmaceutical industry under the bus, it is critical to understand the relationship between pharmaceutical R&D, new drugs and human health impacts. And in fact, finds that the related drugs brought to market are having a bigger positive effect than you might think. Frank Lichtentberg, a professor at Columbia University and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that an increase in drug proliferation year-over-year (drug vintage) leads to increased life expectancy. From 2000 to 2009, the study finds that life expectancy increased by 1.74 years on average, and 73% of that increase was due to new drugs brought to market after 1990. In other words, pharmaceutical innovation added 1.23 years to the average lifespan. The author also finds that of the 9-year difference in average life expectancy between the top-5 nations and the bottom 5, more than a third of the difference is directly attributable to drug proliferation. Specifically, the study looks at how differences in drug introductions in 1990 affect longevity in 2000. Their study looks at the effect both among and between 30 developed and developing nations. They use a causal model (difference-in-differences) to eliminate biased estimates. Their results are statistically significant, and stand up to a myriad of different specifications and tests of the validity of their claims. The increases in longevity are not attributable to other trends including: income, unemployment, education, urbanization, per-capita health expenditures, DPT immunization, general risk factors of HIV or tuberculosis. So, what is the key point in relating these increases in life-expectancy to pharmaceutical innovation? One might argue that simply keeping people alive who aren't contributing to the economy is a negative thing. However, this argument is fallacious. Between 1970 and 2000, increased U.S. longevity added about $3.2 trillion per year to national wealth. For example, find that if there were a 1 percent reduction in cancer mortality, it would be worth over $500 billion in the United States. In fact, if a cure to cancer were discovered and brought to market, the economic benefit would be potentially worth $50 trillionover the next 30 years. Murphy and Topel rightly claim; "As the population grows, as incomes grow, as health levels improve, and as the baby-boom generation approaches the primary ages of disease-related death, the social value [in $US] of improvements in health will continue to rise." So, what are the policy implications? It has been shown that the effective patent life of most FDA-approved drugs is between 9 and 12 years. (Most pharma-patents are applied for during the pre-clinical period, and even after accounting for partial patent-restoration, the full 20 years of patent protection is not realized.) This makes recapturing the a difficult task indeed. (One that has most likely lead to the recent flurry of off-label promotion.) Moreover, rampant policies in other nations to not pay the full costs of drugs (e.g., through requiring drugs to be sold at discounts) also reduces the revenues that can go back into R&D and innovation. Increasing the effective patent life of R&D intensive industries may be the incentive needed to boost innovation we are looking for, and with it real benefits to social welfare. As , "Without a well structured system of patent protection, neither the research pharmaceutical industry nor the generic industry would be able to grow and prosper, as the rate of new product introductions and patent expirations would decline significantly." Overall, increasing pharmaceutical R&D has positive spillovers. It increases economic productivity and of course individual health and wellbeing. By increasing the returns to life sciences innovation, firms would be increasingly willing to take on the substantial out-of-pocket costs associated with bringing new drugs to market, with real implications for life-expectancy, and real-wealth.

Pharmaceutical companies are responsible for millions of jobs across the world. In the US, the biopharmaceutical industry employs over 800,000 professionals who work across a wide range of areas including scientific research, technical support and manufacturing.

It is estimated that in the US, the industry directly and indirectly supports around 4.7 million jobs. Pharmaceutical companies require highly skilled and educated professionals, with roles for administrative level up to and including Ph.D. scientists.

The pharmaceutical industry certainly doesn’t suffer from a lack of detractors. Many claim that “Big-Pharma” is simply in it for the money, and that they'll push new drugs simply to boost profits, even if the drugs aren't appropriate for the consumer. Others argue that we should eliminate intellectual property protections to get lower price drugs, since there isn’t really that much innovation that has a real impact happening anyway.

However, before throwing the pharmaceutical industry under the bus, it is critical to understand the relationship between pharmaceutical R&D, new drugs and human health impacts. And in fact, a recent study finds that the related drugs brought to market are having a bigger positive effect than you might think. Frank Lichtentberg, a professor at Columbia University and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that an increase in drug proliferation year-over-year (drug vintage) leads to increased life expectancy. From 2000 to 2009, the study finds that life expectancy increased by 1.74 years on average, and 73% of that increase was due to new drugs brought to market after 1990. In other words, pharmaceutical innovation added 1.23 years to the average lifespan. The author also finds that of the 9-year difference in average life expectancy between the top-5 nations and the bottom 5, more than a third of the difference is directly attributable to drug proliferation.

Trust is such a delicate thing and, unfortunately, not something that can be black and white. When we turn our attention to Big Pharma, we can see these complications. Distrust of Big Pharma, the name often given to the companies in the pharmaceutical industry and sometimes also the medical community, is not a foreign concept. Indeed, in a poll surveying 1,019 adults in the United States, it was found that less than 50% of Americans in each age group trusted the industry at least a fair amount. The name itself implies a power that incites anxiety and distrust. And yet, when it came to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Moderna that generated vaccines that may be one of the main contributors to one day returning to ‘normal.’

So, Big Pharma is good? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. When we look at the current drug prices of insulin and the history of the opioid epidemic, it is blatantly apparent why we should not trust the proprietors within the industry. Like any industry, pharmaceutical companies work on the basis of competition and the driving force behind many economic principles: generating profit. But when lives are involved, competition can become more than just something that may cause a loss of money — it can cause loss of life. Let’s observe the case with insulin, a ‘biologic’ drug that is necessary for those with diabetes. With only a few manufacturers producing insulin, prices have risen dramatically and forced many people who are unable to pay for insulin to ration insulin — a practice that can be fatal for those with diabetes. There is a similar trend of atrocious realities in the opioid epidemic. When many opioids were first marketed to hospitals, their addictive properties were not included. Instead, pharmaceutical companies pushed doctors to prescribe the pain killers. The fatal results of that are seen now, with nearly 1.6 million individuals affected by opioid use and nearly 70,630 deaths from opioid overdose in 2019. And this is simply scratching the surface.

The vast majority of the world’s pharmaceutical innovation comes out of the U.S. We produce some of the most vital drugs for people around the globe. In the case of COVID, our pharmaceutical companies have risen to the challenge and have developed vaccines in less than a year. These vaccines will play a critical role in allowing life to get back to normal for most Americans.

In addition to the quick development of the vaccines, manufacturers were ready to go as soon as they had FDA approval. As a result, more than half the population has gotten at least one dose of the vaccine in roughly four months. The incredible effort it took to accomplish that should not be overlooked.

Yet as we sit here in the throes of a global pandemic, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: A vaccine is the only real hope for beating the coronavirus, and only the pharmaceutical industry has the human capital and physical infrastructure to create one. The difference between waiting four months and four years for a vaccine could be millions of lives and trillions of dollars.

The cost of producing a vaccine, in other words, is priceless. But expecting Big Pharma to deliver a cure means acknowledging how Big Pharma works. The economic logic that drives up drug prices and fuels constant political outrage also makes rapid drug development possible. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Pharmaceuticals have been used to treat illnesses for thousands of years. The early days of medication included plants and herbal remedies to treat a variety of diseases and traumas. Today, the long and complex journey to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of a compound and bring it from the laboratory into the hands of patients in need, is a multi-billion-dollar global industry.

Pharmaceutical companies continually strive towards innovative new treatments that help people live longer and healthier lives. These therapies are developed, manufactured, marketed and distributed around the world by pharmaceutical companies every day. Here, we look at some of the key contributions of the industry, and the reasons why pharmaceutical companies are so important to patients, society and the life sciences industry:

It’s easy to hate Big Pharma. Drug prices are absurdly high compared to the rest of the world. Executive salaries can be stomach-churning. Lobbyists treat Washington like it’s their own personal client state. To any sentient observer, it appears the biomedical industry has gotten greedy.

Yet as we sit here in the throes of a global pandemic, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: A vaccine is the only real hope for beating the coronavirus, and only the pharmaceutical industry has the human capital and physical infrastructure to create one. The difference between waiting four months and four years for a vaccine could be millions of lives and trillions of dollars.

(Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, “Evidence-Based Intellectual Property Policymaking: An Integrated Review of Methods and Conclusions,” pg online @ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jwip.12069 //pa-ef)

Another issue is that those who insist on evidence-based IP policy occasionally ignore their own ideals. “Policy making remains a political business with or without economic evidence”, Towse (2013) explains in the Cambridge Journal of Economics in 2013 (p. 1188). This undermines stakeholders’ confidence in a process of preparing and submitting evidence that may not matter anyways. Database protection in the European Union (EU) has been cited as one example (Hargreaves, 2011, p. 19). Copyright term extension for sound recordings in the United Kingdom, to match protection in the EU, is another (Hargreaves, 2011; Towse, 2013).

(“Improving Policy Instruments through Impact Assessment,” pg online @ https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/5kml60vnhc6h-en.pdf?expires=1721281449&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3EC467D790CE506FA407BC6512D869C3 //pa-ef)

As a final step, the results of consultations inside and outside the administration, as well as the results of the analysis carried out by civil servants in the lead ministry are evaluated, documented and comparatively assessed. The output of this comparative assessment will be a recommendation for the political decision-takers determining the policy option, which seems to best meet the set requirements. The final decision on which alternative to pursue rests with the political level. There may well be political considerations which could result in choosing another rather than the recommended alternative.

(Yifat Nahmias Senior Research Fellow, Center for Cyber Law and Policy (CCLP), University of Haifa; Researcher, The Heth Academic Center for Research of Competition and Regulation, College of Management. & Maayan Perel*+ Associate Professor, Netanya Academic College, Faculty of Law; Senior Research Fellow, Haifa Center for Law & Technology, University of Haifa Faculty of Law, “THE OVERSIGHT OF CONTENT MODERATION BY AI: IMPACT ASSESSMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS,” pg lexis//pa-ef)

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