Directions (95-100): Read the following passage and answer the given
questions. Some words are highlighted to help you answer the questions.
Technology is growing by leaps and bounds. Innovation and disruption have
become everyday phenomena. A technology driven organization is a company
whose business model, innovation strategy, and growth are technology-centric.
Advancements in technology not only help industries to function at a faster
pace, but they also help to minimize human effort and increase the efficiency
of production. At the same time, technology is also becoming an increasing
factor for increasing unemployment.
Technology is ___(I)___ to a variety of avenues of new scientific discoveries
and developments. Some of these developments are artificial intelligence, 3D
printing, self- driven vehicles, and robotics. As a result, technology has started
creating employment for skilled professionals. Also, considering automation
in agriculture and manufacturing. This has opened opportunities for people
who can drive machines and even for companies which work on automation
technology. Along with the growth of jobs in the automation sector, dependent
industries start growing. For example, with increasing automation in
manufacturing, research and development in supply chain and logistics grows.
Hence, technology has been a boon considering the number of jobs it
continues to create. Given the fact that these developments in technology are
endless, employment opportunities too will see an ever-increasing graph, more
so in talent-rich countries such as India and China. However, the immediate
result of technological advancements is observed as losses in employment.
This is because, with the growth in technology, more and more manual tasks
are replaced by machines. This makes more and more jobs redundant as
machines guarantee efficiency as well as are a cost-effective alternative to
human employees. This forces people to continuously update themselves and
hence leads to survival of the fittest. This can be hard on an unskilled
workforce which has no access to skill development training or to education.
Although some of the studies are close when it comes to predictions up to
2020-2021, jumping ahead a decade the numbers become incomprehensibly
bigger. To think that only 1.8 million jobs will go within the next two years,
and ten years later that figure increases by half a million or more, is difficult to
accept. But, change is coming, and as the technology becomes more prevalent
and embedded within different sectors of the economy, it could be far reaching
and rapid.
The 2017 McKinsey study also assesses degrees of automation and revealed a
now well documented statistic. 60% of occupations have at least 30% of
constituent work activities that can be automated. It further states that although half of all jobs have the technical potential to become automated based on currently available technologies, due to social, economic and technical factors, the rate of adoption will be varied and slow. However, over 200 million global workers will need to switch occupational categories by 2030 and most likely re-train because of role changes.
The intervention of technology in any domain has become absolutely
inevitable. The wonders of technology are such that it has not just boosted
productivity and efficiency, but also the level of safety which would have been
unachievable by humans alone. Faster communication, rapid transactions,
global reach are all by-products of growth in technology. However, most
policymakers are neither keyed in nor in pace, and we could be frittering away
these growth opportunities as a result. We can, therefore, conclude by saying
that although technology in terms of automation has reduced jobs for unskilled
people, it has outgrown the growth in employment in other areas. This can be
dealt with a shift of people from unskilled to specially-skilled employees. This
change will further enhance the growth of people, their employability, their
pay scales, basic income and purchasing power of people, leading the world to
development alone.
95. Which of the following sentence (s) is/are true according to the context of the passage?
(I)Technology and automation have compressed the opportunities for
dependent industries.
(II)Technical advancement is forcing people to continuously update their
knowledge to sustain in the job market
(III)Even though some jobs will become redundant, technological
advancement has the potential to create many more employment opportunities.
(a)Both (i) and (ii)
(b)Only (iii)
(c)Both (ii) and (iii)
(d)All of these
