Question

but these fears are misplaced—whats happening with automation is not so simple or obvious. it turns out that workers will have greater employment opportunities if their occupation undergoes some degree of computer automation. as long as they can learn to use the new tools, automation will be their friend. take the legal industry as an example. computers are taking over some of the work of lawyers and paralegals, and theyre doing a better job of it. for over a decade, computers have been used to sort through corporate documents to find those that are relevant to lawsuits. this process—called “discovery” in the profession—can run up millions of dollars in legal bills, but electronic methods can erase the vast majority of those costs. moreover, the computers are often more accurate than humans: in one study, software correctly found 95 percent of the relevant documents, while humans identified only 51 percent. but, perhaps surprisingly, electronic discovery software has not thrown paralegals and lawyers into unemployment lines. in fact, employment for paralegals and lawyers has grown robustly. while electronic discovery software has become a billion - dollar business since the late 1990s, jobs for paralegals and legal - support workers actually grew faster than the labor force as a whole, adding over 50,000 jobs since 2000, according to data from the u.s. census bureau. the number of lawyers increased by a quarter of a million. something similar happened when atms automated the tasks of bank tellers and when barcode scanners automated the work of cashiers: rather than contributing to unemployment, the number of workers in these occupations grew. these are not special exceptions. on average, since 1980, occupations with above - average computer use have grown substantially faster (0.9 percent per year), as shown in this chart: the average annual percentage growth in jobs between 1980 and 2013

Explanation:

The text discusses the impact of automation on employment, using the legal industry as an example where computer - based automation in legal document discovery has not led to job losses but rather job growth. It also mentions similar trends in bank teller and cashier jobs after automation. The claim about automation being a paradox is because it is often assumed to cause job losses, but in these cases, it has led to job growth in related occupations.

1. Annotate: "It turns out that workers will have greater employment opportunities if their occupation undergoes some degree of computer automation." This statement best expresses the author's claim as it sums up the overall idea that automation can be beneficial for employment.
2. Analyze: The writer's claim about automation is a paradox because the common perception is that automation replaces human workers and causes unemployment. However, the examples of the legal industry (electronic discovery software), bank tellers (ATMs), and cashiers (barcode scanners) show that, instead of causing job losses, these automated systems have led to job growth in the respective occupations.

Answer:

Annotate: It turns out that workers will have greater employment opportunities if their occupation undergoes some degree of computer automation.
Analyze: Because the common view is that automation causes unemployment, yet these examples show job - growth in automated occupations.