Essay On Technology And Technology

Have you ever worried about your job security? Have you ever considered that you may be replaced by a robot? Well if you haven 't, maybe you should. There have been many predictions that computers and robots will replace more and more jobs, resulting in either a near or completely jobless future. Controversially, many claim that technology will not ever threaten our jobs in a significant manner. This paper compares arguments between those that claim that technology will lower labor force participation rate, and those that argue that it wont, and explains why technological progress will cause the labor force participation rate to become lower and lower over the 21st century. Labor force participation rate is the main focus of this paper,

This is a known phrase regularly repeated, and important to understand. While technology in the past has only replaced low level jobs, now, advanced computers capable of learning threaten white collar, and even professional workers. We have bots crushing lawyers and doctors in research and diagnosis, such as Watson, a computer that has been learning to be a doctor by reading millions of medical studies and papers, and has been diagnosing patients as good or even better than regular doctors, consistently. Even creative jobs, though a very small portion of the labor force, are replaceable by bots. An example of this is Emily Howell, a music composing program written by David Cope, that is capable of writing music indistinguishable to music written by humans. Automation isn 't about working together with humans, it doesn 't provide more jobs, it just completely removes the necessity of the human all together. A perfect example of this in history is the horse. For literally thousands of years we employed horses in many ways, usually as transportation, but also in war and agriculture. For thousands of years, technological advances improved upon our 'employment rate ' of said horses. This was the case up till about a hundred years ago when automobiles (automation!) started being produced in mass. Since then, we 've seen over 80% decrease in equine population in the United States, which is about what studies claim to be our

New jobs made by technology can require additional skills and education that those displaced did not originally have, creating inequality, but not necessarily replaced jobs, just displaced. So the labor force participation rate does not change, because there are the same or more jobs than before the technology, but those that worked the jobs that the technology is doing now, are at a loss for a job, while those educated and skilled in a particular area, gain more potential job positions. A prime example being that a hundred and fifty years ago over sixty percent of our population in the United States were employed in agriculture, now it is less than two percent of our labor force. And yet fifty eight percent of our population is not out of work because of this. The same concept can be applied to any technology, when a worker gets displaced, our economy finds a new job for them. Some claim that there are jobs that computers will never replace, such as David Hummels, a professor of economics at Purdue University. He says our ability as humans to respond to other humans is a unique advantage that machines may never be able to emulate. He further states that evolutionary adaptation has created in humans extraordinary sensorimotor skills that are key components of many occupations. Elevating machines to the point where they could perform