Mangaluru: Young graduates need to balance technology with humanity carefully, both at the individual and societal levels, to maximise the benefits of technology, Subra Suresh, president, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, said in his convocation address at the Mangalore University here on Monday.

Mr. Suresh said that today, young graduates had no choice but to engage with technology in this period, which was the early stage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0.

Among the unique characters of this revolution included the unprecedented pace of change of technology, mainly aided through advances in computing and digitalisation. The rate of advance of technology was much faster than society’s ability to comprehend its full impact and to adapt to changes.

Like the other three industrial revolutions, policy makers and leaders expected Industry 4.0 result in elimination of many jobs that could readily be automated. The matter of concern, Mr. Suresh said, would be the marked increase in the disparity between the “haves” and “have nots” if the rate of job destruction from technology moved much faster than the rate of job creation.

Earlier, Vice-Chancellor K. Byrappa conferred Mr. Suresh with a honorary doctorate. Mr. Byrappa also conferred degrees to 26,163 candidates who passed out in examinations held in 2016-17.

It included 18,139 from undergraduate courses, 4,841 post graduates, 1,078 post graduates (autonomous), 1,983 under graduates (autonomous), 96 Ph.D and 16 P.G. Diploma holders.

As many as 120 candidates shared gold medals and cash prizes in five faculties. Among them included visually-impaired Chandana K.S, who received one gold medal and five cash prizes for scoring highest marks in MA (Kannada).

Ms. Chandana, who keeps herself involved reading works of Poornachandra Tejaswi and Kuvempu, said her interest in Kannada literature has not lessened despite her inability to see from her left eye.

Among other medal winners included Bharath A.C., who was given two gold medals and three cash prizes for securing the first rank in MA (History). Shrigouri S. Joshi received two gold medals and two cash prizes for topping the Masters of Communication and Journalism course.

Sabiya was given a gold medal for being the topper from the M.Sc (Material Science) course.