David Bazan

10/18/23

Writing 2

Reflection Essay

The scholarly article I chose to write about was “Smart Technology, Artificial

Intelligence, Robotics, and Algorithms (STARA): Employees’ perceptions of our future

workplace'' by authors David Brougham and Jarrod Haar. This research article is about Smart

Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Algorithms (STARA) and how “employees

feel their job could be replaced by these types of technology” (1). The article expressed the

concern that AI has already started to affect employees and their mental health. The article goes

over certain issues like employees feeling depressed and feeling like they will lose their job as AI

advances. The authors use surveys to find out what exactly people think about STARA and if

they even find it a threat to their own jobs. They were able to find that as more and more people

know about STARA, the more depressed and unmotivated they felt. STARA had negatively

affected the mental health of employees who knew about its potential. The authors also state that

workers should really consider their career opportunities and how it can be affected by STARA.

The genre that I chose was a blog post. The reason why I chose this genre was because I

felt like the research article had information that was too hard to read to the average reader. The

reason for this was that its audience isn’t ordinary people but other researchers and people who

are already very knowledgeable in the subject. Blogs on the other hand can have audiences that

are not so informed about the topic. A blog’s audience usually consists of people who are

interested in the topic that is being talked about and are more welcoming to people who are not
professionals. Articles expect readers to be experts in the field while blog posts expect no prior

knowledge. For that reason I wanted to take all the important information gathered from the

article and turn it into a much easier to read blog so that anyone can read it. The audience for my

blog are readers who have jobs (especially those who are in the tech industry) and are afraid of

job displacement due to AI. The secondary audience would be college and even highschool

students who are beginning to look for jobs. I believe that a blog is the perfect way to convey this

newfound information to this audience because they are not necessarily experts when it comes to

artificial intelligence. The reason for this blog is so that these people can stay informed about job

security because they are in that part of life where figuring out their job is important for their

future. Another thing that I need to know is what conventions I was going to adapt and use for

the blog. According to “Writing about Writing” by authors Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs,

“There are “rules” or at least unspoken but known conventions for how groups of people use

writing together, and these rules constrain what writers and readers can do.” (101). A blog, like

any form of writing, has a list of conventions. These conventions are what make a specific genre

that genre, so following them are important. Some conventions of a blog that I used was a title,

subheadings, and personal touch. A catchy title ensures that I catch the reader's attention and is

the first and most important step of creating a blog. My title went through a few revisions before

I settled with my final title. I wanted my title to directly reference my audience. My title does

that while also appealing to their interest. Since my audience are people who are in the process of

looking for jobs I felt like I needed my title to really catch their eye. I decided on the title “AI

Could Already Be Affecting Your Work!”. This title makes it so that people who are looking for

jobs and those that already have jobs turn heads. The title is saying to the reader who watch out

for AI because it is already directly affecting them. Another convention I used was subheadings
in order to help separate ideas into parts and with the flow of the blog. Lastly, a blog must have

some personal opinion embedded in the blog in order to better relate to the reader. Unlike

articles, blog posts can have the author's opinions on the topic that is being presented. No one

will read a blog that sounds robotic and boring. Although there are some exceptions of blogs

being neutral, my blog has at least a little bit of my personal opinion in it. In the blog, I stated

how I believe that AI does have the ability to replace some jobs, but mostly those that are tedious

and repetitive. I did this so that the audience doesn’t feel too scared about the future. By giving

them my own opinion I hope to persuade them into thinking that they should not be scared of AI.

I also believe that my personal opinion can gather more people with similar opinions to read the

blog, which is that AI can’t replace jobs.

When adapting the research article into a blog, I needed to make sure that the central idea

was not lost. To make sure that this did not happen, I annotated the article and captured the main

focus of it. The main idea of the article was to show that people should “should consider their

career opportunities and how they relate to STARA.” and how STARA is already affecting them

mentally (14). The blog only contains information that is key to understanding how AI affects

employees and the main idea of the article. One thing that I did leave out of the blog was all the

surveys and the research itself. These pieces of information felt like it would clog up the blog

and make it unreadable to the normal reader. Instead I only wrote about the conclusions and what

was learned from the research done. The last thing that my audience would want to read about is

science jargon. There would be no point in the blog if it ended up sounding like a research paper.

I made sure that the blog was easy to read for my audience and to not make them confused on a

topic that they were already not so knowledgeable in. As I was taking out information, I kept

thinking to myself, is this information really needed to get the gist of the article? One thing that I
ended up adding was information to make the blog seem like less of a research article. I added

information about how AI helps create business in my blog because it is important to consider

both the pros and cons of AI. This was not originally explored in the research article but I felt

like it was important enough to have its own section. I wanted to make the audience feel better

about AI and that it was not something to be afraid about. Also, I felt like the audience should

really know both sides of AI in order to create their own stance in the topic. I decided to also link

the original article that explored this possibility in case readers wanted to read it. The reason for

this is that I believe that AI can also create many jobs instead of just destroying them.

An issue that did come up while writing the blog was making sure to write in a way that

my audience would understand. According to “How to Read Like a Writer” by Mike Bunn,

“Depending on the subject matter and the intended audience, it may make sense to be more or

less formal in terms of language”(81). What this means is that while writing in a certain genre, it

is important to keep in mind the targeted audience. While writing the blog, I had one important

thing in mind: the audience. I wanted to reach a different audience without changing the central

idea of the article itself . I had to remind myself that the audience would not be professionals or

even students that know all about AI. The research paper assumes that everyone knows what AI

is so I decided to make sure to include a section giving a brief explanation of what Artificial

intelligence is. This piece of context is very important and is not included in the research paper

since it has a different targeted audience. Another thing I did was avoid using language that was

too professional. One example of a word that I changed was “computerisation”. This word was

used to refer to STARA, but it is a word that most people would not know. By not using these

words, it made my blog sound more casual and less like a research paper.
 Translating genres taught me to be able to dissect writing and to analyze it in a new way.

Before, I would just read writing without even thinking about what genre or who the writing is

supposed to reach. These new skills have helped me understand readings that were originally

hard to understand..Another thing that I learned was how to read and write with an audience in

mind. Every genre, whether a newspaper or even a text message, has an audience that it is

targeted towards. Finding out who the audience is is an important step into understanding the

author's main purpose. Even though the blog might not sound as professional as the research

paper, it still gives the audience the overall message that the article was trying to send. I believe

that the blog was successful in informing the audience about AI and to encourage them into

thinking about how it can affect themselves. Hopefully the audience will now be less scared

about AI and maybe even influence those who are looking for a job to take into account their job

security.
 Works Cited

Brougham, D., & Haar, J. (2017, January 24). Smart Technology, Artificial Intelligence, robotics,

and Algorithms (stara): Employees’ perceptions of our future workplace: Journal of

Management & Organization. Cambridge Core.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-management-and-organization/article

/smart-technology-artificial-intelligence-robotics-and-algorithms-stara-employees-percep

tions-of-our-future-workplace/41DB312743EA253848ED846B2882F5DE

Bunn, M. (n.d.). How to read like A writer - WAC clearinghouse. How to Read Like a Writer.

https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/writingspaces2/bunn--how-to-read.pdf

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. “Threshold Concepts and Transfer.” Writing About

Writing, 4th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, p. 101.