Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Matthew Johnson
Kade Parry
English 2010
21 February, 2017
Whether it is a result of the terminator movies, or the result of working directly with
technology, most people have thought about technology taking over the human work force. This
has caused a huge debate across the world attracting the most intelligent of minds and the most
differing opinions. Many people think that technology will replace people and increase the
amount of jobless people, while some people think that it is necessary for the advancement of
mankind. Although certain jobs will be replaced by technology and robots, there will also be jobs
that are created in the process forming an equilibrium of people losing jobs and gaining jobs.
In the world today, there are many people that are afraid their job is going to be replaced
by robots and technology, and there are many people that believe that technology will give more
opportunities and pave the way for new jobs. This has not been a new fear, it has been a fear
since the early 70s when the internet was just introduced and people were going crazy about this
new technology that has become available to them. Although people did lose jobs, the internet
also created a lot of jobs for people. This is the same philosophy that some people have for the
future as well. They believe that just as the internet provided many unforeseen jobs, so will the
introduction of robots in the workplace for example, mechanics that will have to maintain the
Nearly half of all U.S. jobs could be automated within a decade or two (1). He talks about how
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robots are learning to communicate with each other through the cloud and that they are able to
share information allowing them to learn faster than a human. He also talks about how robots are
capable of doing anything from taking out trash to aiding in surgerys (2-3). He discusses the fact
that we have already built our country on machines and now we are giving the machines the
knowledge needed in order to operate and run these industrial machines. He fears that we may be
giving robots and technology too much power over our economy and our country, and that one
day we may come to regret that whether it be because of robot failures, EMPs, or even AI.
In Claire Millers article Smarter Robots Move Deeper Into Workplace, she argues that
Yet there is deep uncertainty about how the pattern will play out now, as two trends are
interacting.. She is explaining that we dont really know what the future will bring us in terms
of jobs and technology. Although the past has shown us that technology not only gets rid of jobs,
but it creates jobs as well, we cant accurately predict what the future will hold because we have
no idea how technology will advance. She quotes Marc Andreessen when he says that Just as
most of us today have jobs that werent even invented 100 years ago, the same will be true 100
years from now. For example, today we have jobs like computer scientists, astronomers, and
tech support, while 100 years ago if you asked someone what tech support was, they would look
at you like you were insane. She is explaining that we will have jobs in the future that we have
no idea about and that we can guess all we want, but we can not predict the future accurately.
Her point of view on the topic is to sort of just wait and see what the future has in store for us
In Karen Korzeps article The Future of Technology and the Effect it may have on
replacing human jobs, she argues that TeleHealth technology will create many new job
opportunities as well as eliminate others. Jobs that exist currently may just have rewritten job
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descriptions. TeleHealth is a program for health care that when put in place should reduce the
cost of health care and improve the quality of health care as well because of the communication
that it gives to the doctor and patient. When Karen says that jobs may have to be rewritten, she is
simply explaining that while many jobs will be irrelevant because of technology, they wont go
away. Instead, they will be rewritten so that people will be working with machines instead of
machines replacing them. For example, if a robot replaces a secretary, then the secretary's job
may have a new description of maintaining that robot and insuring that it is running properly.
This explains a few of the many different opinions on the subject of machines and robots
taking over the work place. First, Alan Brown believes that robots are learning at a rapid pace,
which could be dangerous, and that machines will definitely take jobs from people. Second,
Claire Miller believes that we will okay just as we have seen in history, however, we will have to
wait and see what the future holds for us. Third, Karen Korzep believes that although people's
jobs will be taken away, it will unlock new jobs in the future, and it will help the economy by
In my point of view, the advancement of technology will get rid of a lot of jobs, but these
jobs should not be done by people anyways. The kind of jobs that robots will replace are labor
intensive jobs. For example; filing, factory work, construction, and entering data into databases.
Although robots will be able to do more complicated things, they will still require a human to aid
them in their process because there are limits on what a robot can and cant do. Also, with all of
these people that no longer have these labor jobs, they will be forced to get an education and will
further advance science and the understanding that humans have of our universe. This will
increase the amount of jobs that will be available because so many people are working on
science that we are going to discover something new that will require a lot of people to
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accomplish. In my opinion, the thought that robots will advance to a greater degree than humans
is just silly. We do not have the technology at the moment to create an AI like the human mind
and robots are only capable of doing things that we tell them to do. Although that will change in
the future, I know that when that kind of technology is created, the government will have all
Works Cited
Korzep, Karen. "The Future of Technology and the Effect It May Have on Replacing Human
Jobs." Technology & Health Care, vol. 18, no. 4/5, July 2010, pp. 353-358. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.3233/THC20100592.
BROWN, ALAN S. "Robots at Work Where Do We Fit?." Mechanical Engineering, vol. 138, no.
direct=true&db=a9h&AN=119357129&site=ehost-live.
CAIN MILLER, CLAIRE. "Smarter Robots Move Deeper into Workplace. (Cover Story)." New
York Times, vol. 164, no. 56717, 16 Dec. 2014, pp. A1-A3. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=99971550&site=ehost-live.