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Stephanie Jay

Professor Lohmeyer

English 101

10 April 2018

Does Technology Have the Ability to Take our Future Jobs?

What if I told you that there was a robot made by humans that was able to control its own

emotions, use artificial intelligence to see people, understand conversation, and form relationships? You

might think that this is ridiculous, given that only humans are able to provide these functions. Meet

Sophia. She is a robot created by humans that can crack jokes, make facial expressions, and seemingly

understand what’s going on around her (Gershgorn 1). Being engineered with all of these functions,

Sophia seems to scare many people. Jimmy Fallon, host of The Tonight Show, was very uneasy when he

invited her to appear on the show. “This is really freaking me out,” he said (Gershgorn 1). It seems like

such a crazy idea that something non-human can be programmed to complete human tasks just like

one. Many people have also speculated that introducing these new projects to the world may result in

harm, and even as far as taking over our jobs. Unless technology is crucial to your job and everyday life,

there might not be such a crucial need for it because there is research to suggest that our minds can be

negatively affected from use. If we continue to use technology in progressive ways such as artificial

intelligence, there might be a problem on our hands.

From the beginning of time, our societies and cultures have continually progressed. We have

been able to create so many types of technology that even include the pencil and paper. With these

inventions, we have done so much to progress as a whole. From being able to wash our clothes by the
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press of a button, being able to see what is going on in the world on television, or even advancing skills

in a chess game, we have taken technology to a whole other level. In Clive Thompson’s essay “Smarter

than You Think”, he talks a great deal on how a computer has completely revolutionized the world of

chess. He mentions a world champion chess player, Garry Kasparov, who faced off in a chess battle

against IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer in a six-game tournament. With the supercomputer being able

to calculate two hundred million positions a second, Kasparov was no match for it in the game that he

knew almost everything about. Although Kasparov was beat, he was not too surprised. “Chess grand

masters had predicted for years that computers would eventually beat humans, because they

understood the different ways humans and computers play” (Thompson 342). He figured that being

beat by the computer could be used to his advantage and began to use the computer to practice for

future games against humans. Many chess players would use this technique by practicing with

computers, and eventually even relative amateurs could beat chess players with far more experience

and talent. The supercomputer completely paved a new path in the chess world and was able to

introduce a new method into training for the chess battles.

Technology has not just helped us in playing chess games, it has helped in many areas, especially

the medical field. The number of lives that technology has been able to save is remarkable. We have

progressed to a time where x-rays are common, and we are able to identify a problem in someone’s

body without operation. The medical field has become so advanced in recent years that we are even

able to determine the exact cause of problem with a patient and provide a solution all through artificial

intelligence. “Over the coming years, Artificial Intelligence will help increase research productivity and

improve our ability to diagnose, prognosticate and make treatment decisions” (Kahn 12). There are

many positions in the medical field that are saving lives, and technology plays a huge role in that system.

Technology used in this way is definitely being used for the greater good as we can see. “The other thing

that makes me optimistic about our cognitive future is how much it resembles our cognitive past. Each
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time we’re faced with bewildering new thinking tools, we panic-then quickly set about deducing how

they can be used to help us work, meditate, and create” (Thompson 353). He makes this statement to

show that when we evolve into a new set of technology we are skeptical at first and hesitant until we

get comfortable to handle it to better benefit our everyday lives. Many authors would agree that

technology in the world has tremendously helped altogether. “When we’re augmenting ourselves, we

can be smarter” (Thompson 360).

Although there are numerous upsides to the rise in technology, there is quite a discussion on

whether it is hurting us even more. Clive Thompson puts it well, “Every new tool shapes the way we

think, as well as what we think about” (Thompson 348). We are creating all of these new tools and

advancements to help us, but we might be losing the human in us as well. In Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google

Making Us Stupid?”, he illustrates for us that there may be harm in the new advancements that are yet

to come. “Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to

expect the worst of every new tool or machine” (Carr 326). He uses the example of Socrates bemoaning

the development of writing. “He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute

for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the

dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful” (Carr 326). Most of our

society has done this with the use of computers, smartphones, tablets, etc., and we forget to focus on

what is in front of us. Many generations before feared for the next and wondered what would come of

the new progressions during that next time period.

We have come to a point where technology, artificial intelligence, has become so advanced that

we might not even rely on ourselves to do the work for us. In the article “Will Robots Take Our

Children’s Jobs?”, Alex Williams shows the great concern that many people share on how artificial

humans could take the place of real ones. “Artificial Intelligence could make countless professions

obsolete by the time my sons reach their 20’s” (Williams 1). His two sons are aged four and seven, and
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they already know about robots as well. Williams decided to ask his son, Toby, why children admire the

robots as much as they do. His son responded by saying “Because they work for you” (Williams 1). It is

alarming that children are already admiring a robot to work for them, and it might be the same way

when they decide to get a job as well. Along with our jobs being taken away, a simple task of driving a

car is even made easier with cars that can drive themselves. Uber, a company that uses a smartphone

app to let passengers hire a driver to take them to a destination, announced that between the years

2019 and 2021, the company will release 24,000 driverless vehicles for the public to use (Williams 1).

The demand of these Uber drivers will inevitably decrease if there is no need for them in that area of the

workforce. If we create these new types of technology, and keep advancing more and more, we can

possibly count on a robot or some other form of artificial intelligence in doing our job for us.

While technology has helped so many of the people in the world through the workforce in ways

we cannot even imagine, it has seriously become a detriment in many ways as well. This is a result of the

technology that has been provided for us today. It is incomprehensible to think about what could result

of the new advances and additions to technology and artificial intelligence in later years to our own jobs.

We have gained many things from knowing more in the artificial intelligence world, but we may become

so much more dependent on the matter if we are not careful. “As we come to rely on computers to

mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial

intelligence” (Carr 328). I believe Carr is right. Instead of thinking on our own with the new artificial

intelligence, there is chance that we will become completely reliant on thinking through a machine and

have that very machine take over our own job as well. If we are not careful with what we are doing to

progress in the technological world, the artificial intelligence could overrule our own human intelligence

and take over the workforce. We need to make sure that humans are able to continue in their jobs, and

that the line between productivity and total employment can come back together. Take the chance and

go to the cashier instead of the self-checkout or talk to the person face-to-face instead of over an e-mail.
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We can continue these patterns of social interaction and ethical behavior to economically help us if we

choose to. We do not have to let the technology completely overrule our jobs as we know it.

Works Cited:

Carr, Nicholas. “They Say/I Say.” “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, edited by Gerald Graff, Cathy
Birkenstein, and Russel Durst, W. W. Norton & Co., 2006, 313-329.
Gershgorn, Dave. “Inside the Mechanical Brain of the World’s First Robot Citizen.” Quartz. 12 Nov. 2017,
https://qz.com/1121547/how-smart-is-the-first-robot-citizen/. Accessed 10 April 2018.
Kahn, Omar. “Artificial Intelligence in Medicine.” Oncology Exchange, Vol. 16, Issue 4, Pages 8-13.
http://www3.northern.edu:2171/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=7fc08eee-2439-476f-bf0a-
44bf772309e1%40sessionmgr102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=126798907
&db=a9h . Accessed 10 April 2018.
Thompson, Clive. “They Say/I Say.” Smarter than You Think, edited by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein,
and Russel Durst, W. W. Norton & Co., 2006, 340-360.
Williams, Alex. “Will Robots Take our Children’s Jobs?” The New York Times, 11 Dec. 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/style/robots-jobs-children.html. Accessed 10 April 2018.