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Matthew Johnson

Kade Parry

English 2010

21 February, 2017

Humans Vs. Technology

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

robots and other jobs similar to this.

In Alan Brown's article ROBOTS AT WORK WHERE DO WE FIT? he explains that

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

and stop worrying about the unpredictable future.

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

providing care to more people faster and cheaper.

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

kinds of rules and regulations covering AI.

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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.

4, Apr. 2016, pp. 32-37. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

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.