Brittany Lasher
Academic Papers
Rhetorical Analysis Sample
Technology is always advancing. Just like Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper, its flavor changes, evolves, and gets better each day. Instead of touring the Chocolate Factory, we’re going to step inside the mind of Ethan Mollick to see his Artificial Intelligence studies. As consumers, our first question with any big change to our society’s structure is, “How will this affect me?” Mollick and consultants at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), dove headfirst into this topic and its impact on the workforce. They addressed that question plus many others in his blog post, ‘Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier’. As the beginning of his post states, Mollick is an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and heads the Generative AI Labs which conducts research on how AI can help humans thrive while minimizing its risks (Mollick 677). In this analysis, I will dive into Ethan Mollick’s claims that “AI is really a big deal for the future of work” and how he backs up those claims with studies, experiments, data, and a few laughs (Mollick 677).
Being a returning student, I’ve had hands-on experience in the workforce, assisting in the creation of internal AI programs and coaching other adults on handling tech changes in the workforce. The views of Mollick’s intended audience are similar to the views of the team I managed at my former company. The team I coached had similar fears that most of us have when gravitating to posts like this: “Will AI take our jobs?” The answer that Mollick and I gave was the same controversial response: “Yes” and “no”. My own experience made me especially interested in how Mollick addresses these concerns and persuades readers to see AI as both a challenge and an opportunity rather than simply a threat. His blog post reaches any and all who are interested in learning more about our sweet new product, AI, and its impact on the world. This includes but is not limited to students, educators, the technological and digital working class, and scholars in the field.
Using a logos analysis, Mollick created a metaphor to help us understand the nuances of AI called Jagged Frontier (fig. 2), an invisible wall to determine where AI’s strengths and weaknesses lie within that wall, is the center point of visually understanding how we can use AI to the best of its ability without ‘falling asleep at the wheel’ (becoming too dependent), Fabrizio Dell’Acqua, a co-author on a separate paper, quotes on page 682.
When asking AI to assist in tasks inside of the frontier line, it worked as a ‘skill leveler’. Mollick’s findings reported that those who were originally insufficient, increased productivity by 43% than those who were already efficient prior to using AI, which only increased their output by 17% (fig. 4).
Researched Argument Sample
What If No One Asked You to Give Up Meat? A Better Approach to Reducing Meat Consumption
Pro-vegetarian messaging often comes across as condemnatory, with slogans like “meat is murder”, which does more to alienate than persuade. Many meat eaters still view vegetarianism as extreme, unrealistic, or even judgmental. How do we fix the views meat eaters have on a meatless diet? According to the Journal of Social Psychology, “Although many have historically pushed for change through appeals for a shift to a strict vegetarian or vegan diet, a growing collection of alternative dietary practices and identities, such as flexitarianism and reducetarianism, may offer a more palatable approach to meat reduction for the public” (Ginn et al. 1). Because of the negative stigma around non-meat diets, people with meat inclusive diets have a hard time with the current messaging because it suggests an all-or-nothing approach, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Research comparing meat-based and meat-free diets often produces conflicting conclusions or inconclusive results because researchers must account for countless variables, making it difficult to isolate the effects of diet alone. What the world of nutrition and diet is missing is the need for better, less intimidating messaging for meat eaters. Because black-and-white vegetarian messaging often pushes meat eaters away, public campaigns from health organizations should promote flexible, incremental meat reduction instead of demanding complete elimination, making lasting dietary change more achievable.
Before considering why a flexitarian approach to messaging is more effective, it’s important to understand why traditional vegetarian messaging often fails to persuade the audience it hopes to reach. At the University of Melbourne, they researched a particular study that focused on three different appeals to meat eaters, environmental, animal welfare, and agreeableness of the advertisements the participants were exposed to. The people who regularly ate meat were not as influenced by the promotions to join them in eating no meat at all, as is quoted by Smillie et al. by saying “...[this] may explain why our participants who viewed eating animals as highly normative were less moved by appeals focused on animal welfare” (Smillie et al. 9). This quote informs us that the wrong message to the right people can be a detriment to changing dietary practices which could explain why traditional vegetarian messaging is failing to reach them. This also shows us that ethical persuasion was unlikely to succeed and should not be included in the general public messages for pro-vegetarian agendas. Instead, focusing on what matters to omnivores: cost, taste, and convenience.
That being said, flexitarian campaigns that offered small changes to daily meal considerations, had a bigger impact on the study participants, like is explained from the Journal of Social Psychology, “a recent study has found that advocating for meat reduction led to a greater short-term dietary behavior shift away from meat consumption compared to a vegetarian advocacy and lead to higher rates of pledging to change their diet” (Ginn et al. 2). Typically, public advocacy messaging focuses on hard-hitting slogans, like “save the animals!” and “protect the environment!,” but as these studies show, modest requests are more likely to move the needle among meat eaters when it comes to adjusting their diets or making different choices during meal planning.
