In a world where technology is important and more of our lives are being integrated with technology. A common concern seems to be that our generation seems to become more reliant on technology. But the most important question we must ask ourselves is, “Is this a good or bad thing that technology is taking over, will it affect our possible outcomes towards our future jobs?”. While it seems to be the most controversial topic of our privacy being unprotected, we must also consider how this technology may aid us in the future or hurt us in the end. I’m interested in both sides of this topic, especially from how often the news seems to debate over the possibility of us loosing jobs.
According to a Forbes article ” Technology has already taken over 90% of the jobs humans used to have.”(Luck). In fact, NASA used to employ human computers to calculate flight trajectories that helped get our spaceships into the sky. Today the aggregate computing power of human computing from that era is dwarfed by the device sitting in your pocket. However, NASA isn’t the only ones slowly replacing out human workers with machinery, in fact most grocery stores cut down on employees with the use of self-checkouts instead of hiring more cashiers. The same goes with a few fast food chains such as McDonald’s where there are also self-checkout like machines where costumers can order their own meal with minimal interaction with the workers at the front. While most people argue that technology is taking over our jobs, it is only replacing at most a quarter of human employees jobs. Most of the technology used by AI systems still need to be programmed by people. So although these robots may be taking over jobs, we’re also creating jobs by providing more technology. More innovated ideas to help others around us, as well as there are just some jobs that are too complex to be done by machinery in our present time. Boston Dynamics is famous for their many prototypes of their Spot, a dog like robotic that is built to not be kicked down and to carry things on all types of different terrains. Point being is, although everything seems like technology is taking over everything, we still have a long time before it could get to that.
Technology is expanding and so is it’s marketed demand for jobs. Personally, the most common problem I could think of was the job scare in 2008, where many people where getting fired due to the economy. I think most people have the same fear as we start relying more and more on technology. They’re scared that many of the common jobs we have are getting taken away due to the creation of robotics and basic technology. While there are so many different articles that argue either technology is helping or we will end up being more of a dystopian society. Like many of the popular Sci-fi movies that show a broken society. A great popular Disney movie Wall-E displays this fear that common people have when it comes to our future. In Wall-E, we see an example of humans being too reliant on technology and eventually they come against technology and start over . However, there’s also argument that plenty of technology that aid human’s for the better, plenty of artificial intelligence items that are built to help people with disabilities. “Voice assistance, self-driving cars…” (Wiggers) items like this can help people who might have had difficulty or might not have been able to travel to the places they wanted originally.
While I’m interested in how technology can destroy or create new job industries in the market. This can also boost our economical state, with more inventions and technological creations we’ll have more use for the different uses and aid for humans. It’s beneficial to create a more inclusive environment in the future for everyone to be existing in. With the invention of self-driving cars more people can be on the road and explore different parts of new places that maybe they weren’t able to reach beforehand. I think it’s also possible for there to be some concern. Mainly because self driving cars also have a bad wrap for the possibility of being hacked. The first kind of self driving cars had this exact issue. However, most of this can be changed, with prototyping and testing often. Fast food chains and supermarkets have already created self checkout stations where there’s minimal interaction with cashiers, as mentioned before. But, also there’s medical fields that are using technology to create surgical robots, like VR assisting eye training surgeons. (Loftus). I believe it’ll be less apocalyptic once more technology comes out, we’re most likely to see technology and humans working along side with each other. Even then most of the technology created has to be done by engineers and other programmers to begin with. Therefore, we’ll see less of these fears play out.
As mentioned before technology improves communications, and knowledge. We’re seeing an increase in STEM majors (Peller), majors in these fields have skyrocketed the past few years, and continues to grow. So even though technologies are taking a quarter of our work, it’s also creating new work for our generation of undergraduate and graduates in these STEM fields. With the increase of technology we have more uses for wearable technology as well, new smartphones link up to smartwatches, with that more possibilities open up for creators and inventors as well.
Having different implementations of communications, also connecting all of us together through the medium of the internet. While Bolter and Grusin’s article suggest that new media and old media influences how we understand each other. We can see how that is really true, although the evolutions of phones would be an example. We slowly transitions through direct messaging throughout our social media apps. Originally back in the day, we had the transferring of messages or letters through mail. The mail would be carried on horseback and take a long time for messages to be received from on another. Eventually we moved on to our mail transferring through mail trucks, overseas, or through planes. While now we see direct messaging or texting mimicking the same concepts but even faster. Messages are quickly received to one another, without having to wait a long time. Participants in chatting won’t have to wait for the weather to be better to receive their messages. And much like letters we have ways of emailing which is just quite literally electric mail. So we can see how the evolution of mail has evolved through the use of technology and how it mimics in the same way. Although these are less technologically based and more physical, these apps for us to talk to each other wouldn’t be possible without technology and the people behind it.
Although knowledge is commonly known to be at our fingertip it also empowers us with information, though us as consumers must understand that there are fake news and real news. We need to understand how to differentiate between the two. But technology also allows us to be closer and connected because of communication. Though there are so many statistical analysis about what may happen when technology takes over, we’ll never know until it happens. So we must just be cautious of our understanding of technology. The more people who understand technology and basic coding, the less people will assume that ALL jobs will be taken over.
Resources:
Luck, Gleen. “Technology Has Already Taken Over 90% Of The Jobs Humans Used To Do.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 18 Jan. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/01/18/technology-has-already-taken-over-90-of-the-jobs-humans-used-to-do/#3bd0f2201bdd.
O’Brien, Matt. “Will Robots Take Your Job? Quarter of US Workers at Risk.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 2019, abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/chefs-truck-drivers-beware-ai-coming-jobs-60586948.
Service, Indo-Asian News. “Can Artificial Intelligence Take Away Your Job? Probably Not.” India Today, India Today, 19 Feb. 2019, www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/can-artificial-intelligence-take-away-your-job-probably-not-1459601-2019-02-19.
https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot
Wiggers, Kyle. “Here Are the Ways AI Is Helping to Improve Accessibility.” VentureBeat, VentureBeat, 29 Oct. 2018, venturebeat.com/2018/05/17/here-are-the-ways-ai-is-helping-to-improve-accessibility/.
Loftus, Tom. “The Morning Download: Genentech’s VR Effort Focuses on Training Eye Surgeons.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 7 Feb. 2019, blogs.wsj.com/cio/2019/02/07/the-morning-download-genentechs-vr-effort-focuses-on-training-eye-surgeons/.
Peller, Lauren, et al. “Officials Continue to Push Science Agenda as STEM Majors Soar.” The GW Hatchet, Https://Www.gwhatchet.com, 4 Mar. 2019, www.gwhatchet.com/2019/03/04/officials-continue-to-push-science-agenda-as-stem-majors-soar/.