(Alert readers are asked to note that the title above is the one used in the paper’s National edition in print this past week–KSH<\/i>.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.<\/p>\n
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 \u201d\u201d allowing machines to mimic the human mind \u201d\u201d are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s recent improvement, the share of working-age adults who are working is substantially lower than a decade ago \u201d\u201d and lower than any point in the 1990s.<\/p>\n