Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has underscored the urgency for institutions to innovate so people can deal best with constant technological disruptions underpinning today’s 4th Industrial Revolution.

Dominguez said during Friday’s Governors’ Seminar of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that policy responses need to be crafted to, among others, help its member-countries cope with the changing requirements for education and skills, ensure that vital infrastructure are in place to support their rapidly reconfiguring economies, guarantee affordable access to goods, provide enough safety nets for people and adopt ethical standards for Artificial Intelligence (AI) that will be accepted by all.

The Governors’ Seminar with the theme “Technological Change, Globalization and Jobs In Asia” forms part of the parallel events leading up to the 51stAnnual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors on Saturday (May 5).

This weekend meeting aims to seek the ADB governors’ views on how new technologies and inward-oriented sentiments regarding globalization are affecting the prospects for job creation in developing Asia.

Skills development, tax and subsidy programs that influence firms’ investment and employment decisions, and the design of social protection systems are among the relevant concerns to be discussed during the May 5 meeting.

“We are in the midst of the 4thIndustrial Revolution. It is driven at a breathtaking speed and rapid changes in technology. While we may not fully understand where all the disruptive technological changes will take us, we must innovate our institutions to improve our ability to deal with the transforming environment,” Dominguez, who is this year’s chairman of the ADB Board of Governors, said in his opening remarks at the Seminar.

ADB President Nakao and the finance ministers of ADB’s member-economies comprising the Bank’s Board of Governors will take part in the meeting.

Dominguez said underpinning the 4th Industrial Revolution powered by digital technology is “the explosion of data, the rise of data analytics and breathtaking advances in cloud computing,” which can harness unlimited computing power.

With such radical technological developments, machine intelligence becomes more powerful by the day, leaving some enthralled by its numerous possibilities and others fearful of its consequences, Dominguez said.

“Technological innovation sweeps the entire horizon from manufacturing to biotechnology to information sharing. Ten years ago, we could not have imagined the advances in genomics, personalized medicine and 3D printing that we see all around us now. New business models such as Grab, Uber, Amazon and Air Bnb were unimaginable only recently,” he said.

Dominguez recalled that a century ago, new manufacturing methods in the automotive industry, which enabled General Motors to sell from 39,000 cars in 1910 to a whopping 600,000 cars just 14 years later, caused disruptive change that by today’s standards was a small leap.

“Today, technological obsolescence could happen in a matter of weeks or months,” Dominguez said. “Technological change destroys as well as creates. That could make institutions tentative and social orders very fluid.”

The delegates to the 51stAnnual Meeting, which number over 4,000, ​include finance ministers and central bank governors of ADB member countries, bankers, representatives from the private sector, civil society, academe, multilateral institutions and the media.

Around 8,000 police officers were deployed to secure this high-level event, which include the ADB Governors’ sessions to be held at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel, and other meetings conducted at the ADB Headquarters in Mandaluyong City, and nearby hotels.

Anchored on the theme “Linking People and Economies for Inclusive Development,” among the issues discussed during the 51st meeting are globalization, technology and its impact on jobs and corresponding opportunities, private sector mobilization in funding infrastructure, building climate change resilience, expanding opportunities for women entrepreneurs, and using technology to maximize the skills of aging populations to make development inclusive.

ADB, which is based in Manila since its inception in 1966, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive, environmentally sustainable growth and regional integration.

BusinessMirror, BusinessWorld, CNNPhilippines, Manila Bulletin, and the Philippine Star are the host-country’s media partners for the 51st ADB Annual Meeting.

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