Trade Rules for Industry 4.0

Abstract

Trade Rules for Industry 4.0Why the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement Matters Even More Aik Hoe Lim* i industry 4.0: the whole is greater than the sum of its partsAristotle is credited for having said "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Correctly or incorrectly attributed to Aristotle, those words have beguiled philosophers for many a century. If Aristotle did indeed say those words, 1 he probably did not have Industry 4.0 in mind.Yet, his thoughts are rather prescient. They are prescient in the sense that the concept that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" underpins the notion of "emergence", a key idea in the debate over what is consciousness and artificial intelligence (AI). 2 It is indeed a very good description of what we are witnessing with the convergence 3 of AI, robotics, additive manufacturing (3D printing), blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) into digitally connected networks of production, communication and consumption. The effects of technological innovation are creating immense transformations in the way companies and countries organize production, trade goods, invest capital and develop new products and processes.The third industrial revolution brought us the power of the microprocessor and the personal computer with the capacity to store, organize and retrieve vast amounts of data, and undertake cumbersome repetitive tasks in milliseconds. As each