TEMASEK JUNIOR COLLEGE

2023 JC1 PROMOTIONAL EXAMINATION

Higher 1

GENERAL PAPER 8881/02

Paper 2 Insert 21 September 2023

1 hour 30 minutes
READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST
This insert contains the passages for Paper 2.

This document consists of 4 printed pages.

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Passage 1 An author argues that technology will not replace humans in the workforce.

1 Barely a day goes by when a new prediction about technology replacing humans does
not grab the headlines. Concerns about the effect of technology on work and on people
have been around ever since machines were first invented, but unless the unexpected
occurs, machines and software will likely never replace humans.

2 In the long run, as technology shapes our future, the workforce will increasingly have 5
more winners than losers. The first group of winners are skilled workers, such as
plumbers and electricians, who do work that requires dexterity, mobility and problem-
solving ability in highly unpredictable settings. This type of work is far beyond the
capability of any existing robot and these jobs will remain safe for the foreseeable
future. Second, those workers whose occupations require the development of deep, 10
sophisticated relationships with other people will be relatively safe. This might include
caring roles, such as nursing, or business or educational occupations that require
complex human interactions. While artificial intelligence is making progress in this area
– for example, there are already chatbots that can provide rudimentary mental health
support – it is likely to be a long time before machines can form truly meaningful 15
relationships with humans. The final category includes intellectual work that is creative
or activities that are genuinely non-routine in nature. For these workers, artificial
intelligence will be likely to amplify, rather than replace, their efforts.

3 For all of the career doors technology shuts, there will also be a wave of new
professional paths for people to create and explore. Just as some of today’s jobs – 20
social media community manager, app designer, green funeral director – would have
been impossible to imagine in 1995, I can envision a future in which genetic
counsellors, software debuggers, biobankers, augmented reality authors, anti-ageing
specialists and urban natural disaster mitigation experts all occupy hot sectors of the
economy. As more people move into cities, jobs like urban farmers, anxiety counsellors, 25
clutter consultants and even pet psychologists will become more favourable.

4 Furthermore, just because something can be automated, it does not mean it will be.
Even if restaurants begin using tablets installed on tables to take orders, and robots to
deliver the food and refill beverages, society might not necessarily take to that change.
It could turn out that people simply want to be served food or have their groceries run 30
up, or their taxis driven by other people, not by machines.

5 Technically, machines can become amazing artists. They are able to write music to rival
Bach and produce paintings to match Picasso. But we will still prefer works produced by
human artists. Their works speak to the human experience. We will appreciate a human
artist who speaks about love because we have this in common. No machine will truly 35
experience love like we do. As well as the artistic, there will be a re-appreciation of the
artisan. Indeed, we see the beginnings of this already in hipster culture. We will
appreciate more and more those things made by the human hand. Mass-produced
goods made by machine will become cheap but items made by hand will be rare and
increasingly valuable. This phenomenon is reflected in the recent resurgence of artisans 40
in urban centres around the world, from Brooklyn to London to Berlin to Portland. It
turns out that there is a booming market for handcrafted furniture made from salvaged
factory beams, hand built headphones, gourmet small-batch foods ranging from
marshmallows to mayonnaise – and much more. While there are artisanal companies
that rely on technology, such as e-commerce websites, to find a market for their goods, 45
these products are valued precisely because automation plays no part in their
production.

6 As social animals, we will increasingly appreciate and value social interactions with
other humans. So the most important human traits will be our social and emotional
intelligence, as well as our artistic and creative skills. Our machine-driven future will not
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be about software and devices, but us. 50

Passage 2 An author writes about how technology will render humans obsolete in the workforce.

1 As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves,

fewer people will be necessary. Artificial intelligence is already well on its way to making
even good jobs obsolete. The coming years will likely only see this problem intensify, as
jobs that involve any kind of routine or repetitive work – mental or physical –
are increasingly at risk of being ousted by technology. As progress continues, blue and 5
white collar jobs alike will evaporate, causing massive unemployment. When technology
drives all these jobs towards extinction, many people who used to hold middle-class
positions – travel agents, telephone operators, photo lab technicians, book binders – will
shift to lower-paying work – waiting tables, cleaning houses, landscaping. This means
that a large chunk of the population that could have maintained a middle-class lifestyle 10
in past decades can no longer do so.

2 Demand is steeply growing for highly skilled workers who can manoeuvre technology at
work, but the accompanying need for them to continually re-skill and adapt is highly
stressful. Even as one stays relevant, employees cannot help but worry about the
impending introduction of a new innovation that promises to do their job with more 15
speed and accuracy. What is different about today is the rapid rate at which
technological innovations are taking place. Data indicate that this pace has left workers
struggling to keep up with getting acquainted with yet another new area of expertise.
The digital economy has not helped by creating completely new jobs, rather than those
that build on existing skillsets. These jobs also tend to be centred in cities like London, 20
San Francisco, New York and Stockholm, which not only drives prices up, but also
widens the gap between urbanites and the poor who live in suburban and rural areas.

3 In addition, jobs that were once challenging and required highly skilled expertise could
become mundane, thanks to automation. There are hints of this happening today. As X-
rays and other medical records are digitised and computer algorithms become better at 25
interpreting them, radiologists, for example, find themselves collaborating with
machines, acting more as fact checkers than as medical sleuths. The idea is simple and
frightening. Due to its increasing power, technology substitutes for human capabilities
and can make us feel smaller. While we think that the human race holds an edge in jobs
that require certain capabilities such as emotional intelligence and problem-solving, how 30
many of us are actually adept enough in those areas to say that we can do just as a job,
if not better? The forces driving these trends are inexorable. There is little we can do
except crawl into a hole somewhere and await our horrifying machine-driven destiny.
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Passage 3 An author argues that humans can thrive even as technology takes over jobs.

1 Techno-optimists used to be confident that automation would always create more jobs
than it replaced, but now some wonder, when artificial intelligence gets good enough,
could we all find ourselves replaced? History is full of people declaring this or that
activity too complex for machines, only for machines to prove them wrong a few years
later. Most of this dispiriting picture is true, but there is hope. To thrive in the hi-tech 5
future, we should stop asking what computers will never be able to do, since the answer
is probably “nothing”. Instead, we should ask “What are the activities that we humans,
driven by our deepest nature, will simply insist be performed by other humans?”

2 Over hundreds of thousands of years, our brains have evolved to excel at interacting
with other humans, and we are most fulfilled when we do. There are things 10
we need humans to do, for reasons we can barely articulate. A computer might judge
the evidence in a criminal case perfectly, but we still want a human judge to take
responsibility for such a weighty decision. Emotion-recognition software might outsmart
a therapist when it comes to reading your feelings but we want to be heard by a human.
No matter how well a computer marks essays, students have evolved to respond to 15
inspiring human teachers. And even if a machine could finish writing the remaining
Game Of Thrones novels, fans would not be happy: they need those words to come
from one specific human’s head.

3 There is a nub of truth in all that excruciating corporate-speak about training employees
to be more empathic, or making brands more human. As technology colonises
everything else, the most prized skills will be those we would not want machines to 20
perform, even if they could. Humans need humanness, and so that is what will retain
market value.