From the industrial revolution to the AI era: Transforming safety and efficiency in Jiu Valley mining through intelligent and predictive systems

¹ National Institute for Research and Development in Mine Safety and Protection to Explosion –INSEMEX, 32-34 G-ral Vasile Milea Street, Petroșani, Hunedoara County, Romania
² University of Petrosani, 20 University Street, Petroșani, Hunedoara County, Romania

^* Corresponding author: adrian.matei@insemex.ro

Abstract

Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for progress. Innovation has been, and continues to be, the bedrock of all the techniques, equipment, and mechanisms that surround us today, aiding us in scientific, medical, and engineering fields, as well as in our daily lives. Significant discoveries were also made in other fields, such as metallurgy, with Abraham Darby's invention of coke-based cast iron and Wilkinson's development of steel rolling. The Industrial Revolution was a complex technical process where manual labor was replaced by machinery. In this mechanized system, the worker's role was to supervise, adjust, and feed the machines, while also performing quality control. The revolution resulted in increased production, urban expansion, and scientific progress. The current era is characterized by the ability to transmit and access information without the restrictions of the past. This concept is tied to the Digital Revolution, which signifies the transition to an economy founded on the transmission, processing, and storage of information—the Information Age. The concept of inanimate objects being endowed with intelligence dates back to ancient times. For example, the Greek god Hephaestus was mythologized as forging robotic servants from gold, while priests in ancient Egypt used hidden mechanisms to make statues of gods move. Over the centuries, thinkers like the Greek philosopher Aristotle, the 13th-century Spanish theologian Ramon Llull, the mathematician René Descartes, and the statistician Thomas Bayes described human thought processes in symbolic terms, using the tools and logic of their respective eras. These contributions laid the foundation for core artificial intelligence concepts, such as knowledge representation and logical reasoning.