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Ludditism has been around since at least the 18th century, probably much longer than that, and that’s exactly what this is. It’s not even the hyperbolic “grandp

Ludditism has been around since at least the 18th century, probably much longer than that, and that’s exactly what this is. It’s not even the hyperbolic “grandpa doesn’t like iPads” type of ludditism, it’s the literal raging against technological innovation because you’re scared it’s going to take your job type of ludditism. The guy in the OP didn’t even have his job taken, he just had to use a new tool that made his work far more efficient.

elforce002 4y ago
The thing is that if AI matches the hype around it, there won't be any more jobs left. The economy depends on the middle class working, earning a living, buying things. The government collect taxes from businesses and its citizens. At risk and low-income people depend on the government to assist them with basic things. If AI destroys the middle class, then the whole system collapses. No middle class = no spending = less businesses = more low-income and at risk people, and the cycle continues. We'll basically create a neofeudalist society where the rich will control everything and the people will work for them (food, housing, etc...). It seems crazy, etc... but not improbable. I'm not a conspiracy person, but I can't stop thinking about this: These advancements align with "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy" sentence from the WEF.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  Yes I’m sure AI will be the very first technology to match its own hype. The technology that destroys the middle class has finally arrived. The days of falsely prophesying that a technology is about to destroy the middle class are over.
  - elforce002 4y ago
    C'mon man. It's not that far fetched. I'm not saying that this will happen tomorrow but if ai gets "there", we don't want to see desperation on a global scale.
    - AmericanChopper 4y ago
      The idea that technological innovation is going to destroy the middle class isn’t exactly far fetched, it’s more just blatantly stupid. No economy has ever destroyed its middle class through technological innovation. This will never happen. Technological innovation is one of the primary factors that led to the rise of the middle class to begin with…
      - elforce002 4y ago
        We have 2 scenarios here: - AI will create more jobs (group 1); - AI will destroy the middle class (group 3). This is not trial and error. These are people's lives we're talking about. Families, children, etc... Let's hope this innovation won't cause any bad scenario to occur.
        medvezhenok 4y ago
        AI destroying the middle class will always be a political choice (i.e. the powerful have chosen some sort of hyper-extractive techno-feudalism). You could always tax the AI and redistribute the money back to the people affected. What does have to be changed with the rise of AI is the tax laws. We basically should treat it the same as if an adversary was dumping product under cost (i.e. tax AI "work") and subsidize human workers; basically run a version of protectionism against AI - if we want human work in this post-AGI world to be viable.
        AmericanChopper 4y ago
        Good luck amending the constitution to allow taxing speech. What a terrible idea.
jrochkind1 4y ago
There weren't exactly fewer jobs in textiles after the industrialization the original luddites were against. The jobs were just much, much crappier. (And more of them were filled by children). They weren't "scared it's going to take their jobs" -- they were _seeing_ the jobs they had _actually disappear_ (not hypothetical future fear), replaced by worse-paying jobs with much worse conditions. They were exactly right that their actual lives were going to get a lot harder. From a recent Cory Doctorow post: https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-stea... : > Despite what you may have heard, the Luddites weren’t technophobes. They were skilled workers, expert high tech machine operators who supplied the world with fine textiles. Thanks to a high degree of labor organization through craft guilds, the workers received a fair share of the profit from their labors. They worked hard, but they earned enough through their labors to enjoy lives of dignity and comfort. > Nineteenth century textile workers enjoyed a high degree of personal autonomy. Their machines were in their homes and they worked surrounded by family and friends, away from the oversight of the rich merchants who brought their goods to market. This was the original “cottage industry.” > The factory owners who built their “dark, Satanic mills” weren’t interested in making life easier for textile workers by automating their labor. They wanted to make workers’ lives harder. > Textile machines were valued because they were easier to operate than the hand-looms that preceded them, and that meant that workers who wanted a fair wage for a fair day’s work could be fired and replaced with new workers, without the logistical hassle of the multi-year apprenticeship demanded by the hand-loom and its brethren. > As Brian Merchant documents in Blood in the Machine, his stunning, forthcoming history of the Luddites, the factory owners of the industrial revolution wanted machines so simple that children could work them, because that would let them pick over England’s orphanages, tricking young kids to come work in their factories for ten and twelve hour days. > These children were indentured for a period of ten years, starved and mercilessly beaten when they missed quota. The machines routinely maimed or killed them. One of these children, Robert Blincoe, survived to write a bestselling memoir detailing the horrifying life of the factory owners’ child slaves, inspiring Dickens to write Oliver Twist.
MSFT_Edging 4y ago
Tech people so obviously loath creatives, its so sad. > he just had to use a new tool that made his work far more efficient. He had all satisfaction, creativity, and joy sapped out of his job. He was made alienated, made to feel pointless, in order to commodify a creative pursuit. Technology is doing what it has always done, rob skilled people of purpose. From the luddites, to potters, shoemakers, etc. They had a skill that was important for other people. Automation made this cheaper, so these skilled laborers were no longer of use. But now everything we have is made out of cheap materials, nothing lasts. Sure its cheap, it has to be cheap for the out-of-the-job skilled worker who is now working a service job, to be able to afford this automated commodity. This degrades our society, piece by piece, stone by stone. What is the end goal of this automation? The folks who are reaping the benefits of this efficiency will continue to hoard. They'll fight any effort to give back some of those profits robbed from the laborers. We're turning into a society where we just continuously exchange cheap pointless pieces of plastic just to survive. Zero meaning left except for the psychopaths at the top, they're the only ones allowed to derive meaning from their work.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  > Tech people so obviously loath creatives, its so sad. This isn’t what I’m saying at all. His job changed. You know who else has their job change sometimes? Everybody. I remember going to work one day and being told that I was going to be using Angular from now on. On that day all satisfaction, creativity, and joy was sapped out of my job. But I didn’t go and cry about it on Reddit. > Zero meaning left except for the psychopaths at the top, they're the only ones allowed to derive meaning from their work. Luddites say this about every single technological innovation that they whinge about.
  - MSFT_Edging 4y ago
    > But I didn’t go and cry about it on Reddit. Perhaps you should have. I think people deserve to feel loss. Alienation is a real issue. Automation breeds Alienation. I much rather feel meaning at work than have a cheaper TV or yet another data mining website that requires yet another account for little benefit. > Luddites say this about every single technological innovation that they whinge about. Possibly because it should be concerning that any meaning found in work is being optimized away for someone else's benefit. The weird lack of empathy to admit it happened to you and to decide someone else should feel it to, sorta worries me. Especially in a creative field. Who does the cookie cutter AI models benefit? It doesn't benefit the consumer who wasted money on a lazy product, it doesn't benefit the people working on the project, as now their working hours are cut due to the soulless optimization. It benefits the boss, the guy extracting this value and selling a lesser product.

elforce002 4y ago

The thing is that if AI matches the hype around it, there won't be any more jobs left. The economy depends on the middle class working, earning a living, buying things. The government collect taxes from businesses and its citizens. At risk and low-income people depend on the government to assist them with basic things. If AI destroys the middle class, then the whole system collapses. No middle class = no spending = less businesses = more low-income and at risk people, and the cycle continues. We'll basically create a neofeudalist society where the rich will control everything and the people will work for them (food, housing, etc...). It seems crazy, etc... but not improbable. I'm not a conspiracy person, but I can't stop thinking about this: These advancements align with "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy" sentence from the WEF.

AmericanChopper 4y ago
Yes I’m sure AI will be the very first technology to match its own hype. The technology that destroys the middle class has finally arrived. The days of falsely prophesying that a technology is about to destroy the middle class are over.
- elforce002 4y ago
  C'mon man. It's not that far fetched. I'm not saying that this will happen tomorrow but if ai gets "there", we don't want to see desperation on a global scale.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    The idea that technological innovation is going to destroy the middle class isn’t exactly far fetched, it’s more just blatantly stupid. No economy has ever destroyed its middle class through technological innovation. This will never happen. Technological innovation is one of the primary factors that led to the rise of the middle class to begin with…
    - elforce002 4y ago
      We have 2 scenarios here: - AI will create more jobs (group 1); - AI will destroy the middle class (group 3). This is not trial and error. These are people's lives we're talking about. Families, children, etc... Let's hope this innovation won't cause any bad scenario to occur.
      - medvezhenok 4y ago
        AI destroying the middle class will always be a political choice (i.e. the powerful have chosen some sort of hyper-extractive techno-feudalism). You could always tax the AI and redistribute the money back to the people affected. What does have to be changed with the rise of AI is the tax laws. We basically should treat it the same as if an adversary was dumping product under cost (i.e. tax AI "work") and subsidize human workers; basically run a version of protectionism against AI - if we want human work in this post-AGI world to be viable.
        AmericanChopper 4y ago
        Good luck amending the constitution to allow taxing speech. What a terrible idea.

jrochkind1 4y ago

There weren't exactly fewer jobs in textiles after the industrialization the original luddites were against. The jobs were just much, much crappier. (And more of them were filled by children). They weren't "scared it's going to take their jobs" -- they were _seeing_ the jobs they had _actually disappear_ (not hypothetical future fear), replaced by worse-paying jobs with much worse conditions. They were exactly right that their actual lives were going to get a lot harder. From a recent Cory Doctorow post: https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-stea... : > Despite what you may have heard, the Luddites weren’t technophobes. They were skilled workers, expert high tech machine operators who supplied the world with fine textiles. Thanks to a high degree of labor organization through craft guilds, the workers received a fair share of the profit from their labors. They worked hard, but they earned enough through their labors to enjoy lives of dignity and comfort. > Nineteenth century textile workers enjoyed a high degree of personal autonomy. Their machines were in their homes and they worked surrounded by family and friends, away from the oversight of the rich merchants who brought their goods to market. This was the original “cottage industry.” > The factory owners who built their “dark, Satanic mills” weren’t interested in making life easier for textile workers by automating their labor. They wanted to make workers’ lives harder. > Textile machines were valued because they were easier to operate than the hand-looms that preceded them, and that meant that workers who wanted a fair wage for a fair day’s work could be fired and replaced with new workers, without the logistical hassle of the multi-year apprenticeship demanded by the hand-loom and its brethren. > As Brian Merchant documents in Blood in the Machine, his stunning, forthcoming history of the Luddites, the factory owners of the industrial revolution wanted machines so simple that children could work them, because that would let them pick over England’s orphanages, tricking young kids to come work in their factories for ten and twelve hour days. > These children were indentured for a period of ten years, starved and mercilessly beaten when they missed quota. The machines routinely maimed or killed them. One of these children, Robert Blincoe, survived to write a bestselling memoir detailing the horrifying life of the factory owners’ child slaves, inspiring Dickens to write Oliver Twist.

MSFT_Edging 4y ago

Tech people so obviously loath creatives, its so sad. > he just had to use a new tool that made his work far more efficient. He had all satisfaction, creativity, and joy sapped out of his job. He was made alienated, made to feel pointless, in order to commodify a creative pursuit. Technology is doing what it has always done, rob skilled people of purpose. From the luddites, to potters, shoemakers, etc. They had a skill that was important for other people. Automation made this cheaper, so these skilled laborers were no longer of use. But now everything we have is made out of cheap materials, nothing lasts. Sure its cheap, it has to be cheap for the out-of-the-job skilled worker who is now working a service job, to be able to afford this automated commodity. This degrades our society, piece by piece, stone by stone. What is the end goal of this automation? The folks who are reaping the benefits of this efficiency will continue to hoard. They'll fight any effort to give back some of those profits robbed from the laborers. We're turning into a society where we just continuously exchange cheap pointless pieces of plastic just to survive. Zero meaning left except for the psychopaths at the top, they're the only ones allowed to derive meaning from their work.

AmericanChopper 4y ago
> Tech people so obviously loath creatives, its so sad. This isn’t what I’m saying at all. His job changed. You know who else has their job change sometimes? Everybody. I remember going to work one day and being told that I was going to be using Angular from now on. On that day all satisfaction, creativity, and joy was sapped out of my job. But I didn’t go and cry about it on Reddit. > Zero meaning left except for the psychopaths at the top, they're the only ones allowed to derive meaning from their work. Luddites say this about every single technological innovation that they whinge about.
- MSFT_Edging 4y ago
  > But I didn’t go and cry about it on Reddit. Perhaps you should have. I think people deserve to feel loss. Alienation is a real issue. Automation breeds Alienation. I much rather feel meaning at work than have a cheaper TV or yet another data mining website that requires yet another account for little benefit. > Luddites say this about every single technological innovation that they whinge about. Possibly because it should be concerning that any meaning found in work is being optimized away for someone else's benefit. The weird lack of empathy to admit it happened to you and to decide someone else should feel it to, sorta worries me. Especially in a creative field. Who does the cookie cutter AI models benefit? It doesn't benefit the consumer who wasted money on a lazy product, it doesn't benefit the people working on the project, as now their working hours are cut due to the soulless optimization. It benefits the boss, the guy extracting this value and selling a lesser product.