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A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a
Seattle hospital. At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items
to people's rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news
article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.
Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the
Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The
technological breakthroughs of recent years - allowing machines to mimic the
human mind - are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs,
in addition to factory and clerical work.
And over the same 15-year period that digital technology has inserted itself
into nearly every aspect of life, the job market has fallen into a long
malaise. Even with the economy's recent improvement, the share of
working-age adults who are working is substantially lower than a decade ago
- and lower than any point in the 1990s.
Economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories,
technology would create as many jobs as it destroyed. Now many are not so
sure.
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