33 ms·

Rethinking the Luddites

238 points by Hooke 3y ago

cm2012 3y ago
The only thing that ever makes the human condition better in the long run is increased productivity. If luddites were left in charge we'd all be living like the 1800s.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Ugh, tired of hearing this same old shit. Do you believe the luddites would have burned the looms if instead this offer would have been on the table "Hello, instead of being starving beggars in the street, we will offer you retraining, and provide meals while doing so" Oh, look, a social safety net actually can benefit capital owners and keep their factories from burning.
  - cm2012 3y ago
    They didn't want retraining as mill workers. It was much lower paid work. They wanted their old jobs which didn't exist anymore. I agree that the government should absolutely take care of people who lose the capitalism lottery.
    - ImHereToVote 3y ago
      They just wanted to provide for their families. The reason you don't hear about the ones that didn't is because dead men tell no tales.
    - bigpeopleareold 3y ago
      I think there is a presumption that there is a caring government to take away the duties of maintaining one's livelihood, a livelihood formulated without the modern, post-Revolution (the French one) impulses that we live with today. Current western governments (particularly the social democratic Europe) are in part the result of effects of capitalism, which in the course of modern history, we can't escape so easily (I am sort of alluding to the work of Mark Fisher here.)
pininja 3y ago
History is written by the victors. I hadn’t heard about the Luddite movement until recently but had known of the slang for years. This book argues we might see the term reclaimed by those who have suddenly lost value from the emergence of AI.
- barryrandall 3y ago
  History is written by whoever signs the check, and the popular perception of the Luddites reflects that.
w_for_wumbo 3y ago
There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most important matter is not whether we use technology, but how we treat our fellow humans. By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. We have a mandate for us and our future generations to learn from the lessons of history and stand together as human beings to ensure that the value that we have created is respected and shared with those who created it. We don't deserve the scraps that fall to us, we deserve a seat at the damn table.
- mouse_ 3y ago
  The people in positions of power are going to treat their fellow humans as poorly as they can get away with. That's how they got their positions of power.
  - its_ethan 3y ago
    I think you'd find that, on average, "as poorly as they can get away with" actually does mean that they treat people quite well. I'm not sure what hierarchies you've been a part of where people actively trying to treat people poorly leads to their success - I'd wager those are few in far between in reality, and over represented in media. Maybe you're cynical about a few high profile companies or how U.S. politics appears, but positions of power exist everywhere in society, and society wouldn't be even remotely functional if people followed your assumed behavior.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      You've never heard of sweatshops or labor trafficking?
    - Ensorceled 3y ago
      Google "wage theft US" ... I think some people treat people well, but I've met too many small business owners who bristle at paying minimum wage.
kwhitefoot 3y ago
I thought that this had been the conventional view for a while now. Certainly it is what i have believed for many years, that the Luddites were reacting to iniquitous working practices and market forces.
- NoThankYouTho 3y ago
  You are definitely correct, but there is a popular perception that Luddites are just reactionarily "opposing progress" because it hurts their own personal interests.
  - alexb_ 3y ago
    Those are actually both the same thing. Luddites were being reactionary, they were opposing progress because it hurt their own personal interests, and it was 100% rational for them to do this (and thus should be expected).
  - hef19898 3y ago
    And the advoctaes for this kind of change are only pushing it, against all resistence and withbany means, because it serves their personal interest. Difference being, the Ludditea had their livelihoods and health to loose. The other just a bunch of even more money earned on the backs of an exploited and abused workforce.
    - deleted 3y ago
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  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    "Luddites were reacting to iniquitous working practices and market forces." is the same thing as "reactionarily opposing progress because it hurts their own personal interests."
    - NoThankYouTho 3y ago
      I meant to stress the "opposing progress" part of my comment. The two things are only the same if there was a universal, objective definition of progress with bettering humanity. Imposing a subjective yet "active" intent like opposing progress just obfuscates context and nuance around what's happening.
jacquesm 3y ago
At least the Luddites eventually had other work to go to. This time around I'm not so sure of that.
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  AI can't be used for fuel in a power plant. That's where we will still dominate.
lolinder 3y ago
This version of the Luddites is the one I was taught in my history classes—in both HS and college my teachers were careful to emphasize that the colloquial usage and the actual movement are only loosely related, and we discussed how the Luddites weren't rejecting technology per se so much as they were acting out of desperation to preserve their way of life. This is certainly something worth learning from today, and a new book bringing this interpretation to more people is worthwhile, but it's not a novel take on the movement, just an attempt to reclaim the colloquial phrase.
- czl 3y ago
  > they were acting out of desperation to preserve their way of life Should I have the right to preserve my way of life when it imposes costs on others?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Should you have the right to press for changes that impose a cost on others?
    - winwang 3y ago
      Sure, then I won't "press". I'll just release a product and see if the market wants it.
      - throwanem 3y ago
        So it's okay to perform the harmful act, knowing the harm it will cause, as long as you leave yourself the out of being able to say it'd have come to nothing had others declined to participate? I once heard a heroin dealer make a similar claim.
        kaashif 3y ago
        So you're now comparing AI use to heroin use? Not the most accurate comparison if you ask me.
cynicalsecurity 3y ago
I'm not observing a situation of people massively losing their jobs or losing money. If you do, feel free to share your experience. So far, the AI technology has been a nice toy/support for the people.
- lewhoo 3y ago
  This is true but the "prophecy" is this is unavoidable due to rapid development and no ceiling in sight.
- claudiulodro 3y ago
  Anecdotally I hear that freelance article writing dried up pretty quickly now that you can just ask GPT "write an article about my dry cleaning company in Phoenix" and similar bottom-of-the-barrel content tasks.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  For the first time in history a machine can come up with novel ideas. Up until now, you were only really automating away the boring stuff.
  - zlg_codes 3y ago
    Since when can a computer come up with a novel idea? Do not be fooled by GPT, it's a fancy Markov chain hooked up to training data. It cannot come up with anything that wasn't already in its data set.
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - rafaelero 3y ago
      GPT-4 is around the 99th percentile on creative thinking.[1] [1] https://www.umt.edu/news/2023/07/070523test.php https://www.umt.edu/news/2023/07/070523test.php
    - 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
alexb_ 3y ago
Opposing technological development because it might cost people jobs is how you fall behind as a country. The last thing I want is for China to become the leader of the world because they actually pushed forward with technological progress.
- lolinder 3y ago
  I think you completely missed the article's thesis. It's not about whether people lose their jobs, it's about whether people lose their livelihoods. Millions of lost jobs is inevitable, but millions of ruined lives is unacceptable. > In the era of A.I., we have another opportunity to decide whether automation will create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls. One 1812 letter from the Luddites described their mission as fighting against “all Machinery hurtful to Commonality.” That remains a strong standard by which to judge technological gains.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    I don't think AI and automation actually matters here. You just have a strong welfare safety net so anyone is caught regardless of how they got there. And then you don't have to do wacky accounting about jobs replaced by AI.
    - mm263 3y ago
      AI is already here. Advancements in the next 5-10 years are going to be unprecedented. Will we be able to spin up a safety net at the same pace?
- lewhoo 3y ago
  I think it's clear that China is not the one to push for development of something that may flip the current state of power between government and the people.
randomcarbloke 3y ago
The rewriting of history shows no sign of slowing I see.
- fredoliveira 3y ago
  Care to expand?
  - randomcarbloke 3y ago
    As evidenced by this thread; convenient revisionism by resentful ideologues, aligning luddites with the flavour-of-the-month outrage...be it working conditions, unionisation, etc. The connotations of "luddite" are apt because they're accurate, we have evidence of their activities but also documented evidence of their intentions and beliefs.
coolhand2120 3y ago
People are happy to use tech like wix to build a web page because building web pages is hard. Virtually every designer, artist, writer, and musician, were all very happy to use wix even though it cost the jobs of legions of developers. “Finally I can do what these nerds can do without their help”. I really don’t see the difference.
- abakker 3y ago
  I love this so much. The reality of _all_ technology is that it allows individuals to do more themselves. It condenses the knowledge domain to accomplish a task. In my mind, there are no downsides in allowing individuals more leverage. The real downsides are with the orthogonal problem of what productivity means in civil society. High productivity through technology is perfectly human - we're tool-builders and tool-makers. But, productivity does not absolve us of our responsibility to each other. People who suggest we should not use tools often justify their point of view with assertions of cost born by others. I am suspicious of this argument because the opportunity cost of _not_ letting people use the best tools available could be much greater. For example, had we not developed tools to create mRNA vaccines, many lives would have been lost to Covid that were saved. We don't know yet what AI will enable, but I'd rather we find out what people can achieve than focus on muddying the waters between productivity and society.
  - lewhoo 3y ago
    Sure, if you look at artificial intelligence as a tool (perhaps there is still no reason not to), but the end goal here is not to assist but to replace, isn't it ?
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - abakker 3y ago
      I guess I tend to see it as an augmentation simply because I don't see much evidence of it originating expertise. A side comment here is that I am equally skeptical that leveraging copyright work as training data is fair use. if the objective is to retrieve original copyright work, then I think its fair use, but if the goal is to draw me campaign poster in the style of Shepard Fairey, I'm not that sympathetic. If we use AI to replace the creation of copyright free derivative works, it isn't clear what the objection should be?
Animats 3y ago
They came for the manual laborers, and I was not a manual laborer, so I did nothing. Then they came for the skilled craftsmen, and I was not a skilled craftsman, so I did nothing. Then they came for the clerks and bookeepers, and I was not a clerk or a bookkeeper, so I did nothing. Now they've come for the chattering classes, and there is no one left to speak for me.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Sort of backwards. First they came for the writers and illustrators, and I did nothing because I'm not a writer or an illustrator. Then they came for the musicians, and I did nothing because I only listen to music. Then they came for the text-dependent professional classes, and I did nothing because I'm not one of those people. They they came for the programmers, and the plumbers sat around laughing saying "and you thought you were so much better than us!"
  - jschveibinz 3y ago
    “They” is “we.”
  - nojvek 3y ago
    If AI can truly reason and build complex applications - I.e it has mastered composition and causality, then AI would have a full mental map of how commercial and residential buildings work. How every pipe fitting links to each other. In that case plumbers aren’t needed for small things since a user could state their problem to a smartphone and AI could guide them to the correct fix as it debugs the users house. Same with construction or doctors or teachers. If AI can truly learn and reason the physical world, then it doesn’t mean much to be human. What is being a human in terms of labor? A 100 watt 80kg biological agent with general intelligence that can learn and follow steps. With eyes and ears they sense, with legs they move and and with hands they apply fine motor skills to move other objects. The whole point of AI is to build cheaper labor that follows instructions, never sleeps, never forgets, replaceable if broken. The rich and powerful will 100% get more rich and powerful, the question is how well that prosperity will be shared with the rest. It could be that some powerful nations say let’s go kill entire other continents and take their land with our robot and drone army. Globally 35 billion barrels of oil / yr are consumed. Thats 1700 kWh/barell * 35B = 59.5TWh/year = 6.8 TW. This means if someone could make human equivalent robots that take gasoline as energy, they’d have an army of 68 billion human-like robots.
deleted 3y ago
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janalsncm 3y ago
99% invisible had Brian Merchant on recently. I agree with him except on the point that “Luddite” can be reclaimed. In an ideal world that would be possible, but in practical terms Luddite means a person who is against technological change. If you want to defend Luddite positions you don’t need to defend the term itself. Then the correct retort would be I’m not a Luddite I’m an X where X is something intuitive and short.
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  I like to characterize my approach to technology as "informed carefulness". So maybe "I'm a cautious adopter of technology. I adopt what works, what improves my life, and respects my rights." The violation of people's trust through the use of telemetry is precisely what turned me skeptical of modern day stuff. There's a lot of stuff that I would probably use, if it wasn't hellbent on learning the color of my underwear, how often I snore, or what products I'm interested in. You won't catch me with a Ring camera, any Alexa device, I use uBlock, etc. There is so much more I would be comfortable using in this world of technology if there was a modicum of mutual respect.
  - couchand 3y ago
    > There is so much more I would be comfortable using in this world of technology if there was a modicum of mutual respect. This sentiment was likely shared by many of the original Luddites.
  - brvsft 3y ago
    This reminds me that I find it hilarious when they ask permission to collect more data on you so they can make the ads "more relevant." This is close to their version of mutual respect, "We'll show you the ads you WANT to see."
    - chromoblob 3y ago
      Note the ambiguity: more relevant ads as profitable for the ad provider vs. offers more relevant (useful) to you.
adasdasdas 3y ago
> Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the rights of workers above the inequitable profitability of machines Being against the inequitable profitability of machines is just as dumb as being against technology, especially outside of a socialist context which this definitely was. It's basically crying that someone else is doing something better than you. In fact, I think being against technology wholesale is a much more defensible position since it creates an arms race, its unpredictable, it forces everyone into a lifestyle, etc.
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  > It's basically crying that someone else is doing something better than you. That "someone else" used state power to beat you, imprison you and starve your family if you dared to organize with other workers. Meanwhile, literal conspiracies of factory owners had full legal protection and the ability to write laws, including laws that gave the death penalty for machine breaking.
  - adasdasdas 3y ago
    Source for this please > That "someone else" used state power to beat you, imprison you and starve your family if you dared to organize with other workers. Luddites pre-dated socialism and worker organization. Unless you mean, organizing a terrorist organization to blow up factories.
    - heavyset_go 3y ago
      > Source for this please The Combination Act of 1799, and following Combination Acts, made it illegal for workers to organize in any sense[1][2]. > Luddites pre-dated socialism and worker organization They pre-date Marxist socialism, but the term socialism predates Marx and has had various meanings before then. Marx chose to adopt the existing term to describe his concept of socialism. It's weird for you to say that Luddites pre-dated worker organization, when workers had organized for collective bargaining in the past, and owners made it illegal. It's also interesting considering the history of workers organized in guilds that certainly predate the Luddites by centuries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_Act_1799 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_Act_1799 [2] https://www.marxists.org/history/england/combination-laws/index.htm https://www.marxists.org/history/england/combination-laws/in...
Aunche 3y ago
> Today, the word “Luddite” is used as an insult to anyone resistant to technological innovation; it suggests ignoramuses, sticks in the mud, obstacles to progress. But a new book by the journalist and author Brian Merchant, titled “Blood in the Machine,” argues that Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the rights of workers above the inequitable profitability of machines. Just because Luddites were sympathetic doesn't change the fact that they were wrong. They didn't care for the welfare of workers in general so much as they were looking out for themselves. It did not matter to them that hundreds of thousands of peasants chose to move to find work in the cities because it was better than life in the countryside and by destroying machinery, Luddites were taking away their livelihoods while the factories were shut down. It's usually at this time that someone will bring up the enclosure of common land as the reason why people were forced out of the countryside, but that doesn't change that factory life was still offered a better alternative for a lot of people. The privatization of fertile land was inevitable with a growing population. Without the new factory jobs, even more people would be stuck as serfs like they were in China or Russia at the time.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  90% of people ever to exist were only looking out for themselves. The luddite claim that the industrial revolution made their life worse was absolutely not wrong, even if their actions were selfish.
  - hexage1814 3y ago
    >The luddite claim that the industrial revolution made their life worse was absolutely not wrong So what? How is this even relevant? ATM machines also made the lives of bank tellers worse cause they lost their jobs. As well as the countless automations that happened. "Oh, better stop all technological progress to ensure I have a job", it doesn't work like this, it never did, and anyone who tried this failed miserably because it is selfish and it doesn't work. What matters is that society as a whole was better after every automation. Honestly this whole whining about automation NOW is mainly white collar workers, such as journalists and artists, throwing a hissy fit and asking for special protection because they feel like their job is """"really special"""" unlike other peoples job, it's not like other people have bills to pay and stuff.
type0 3y ago
[flagged]
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
Another book with a similar premise is " Breaking Things at Work:The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job" https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-work https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-w... This book came out in 2021, so there's definitely a trend to look back at the Luddites, investigate what their movement and actions were about, and apply some of those ideas to today. I actually just happened to pick this up in a local bookshop on a whim this weekend, but haven't read it yet.
pkage 3y ago
https://archive.ph/Bqglw https://archive.ph/Bqglw
labrador 3y ago
I like to imagine a world where people don't have to work or worry about health care. It's all done by AI and robots. People are free to pursue their hobbies and other interests. How would we treat each then? Would we still be in terrible conflict with hate and prejudice prevalent?
- phillipcarter 3y ago
  In the US at least, the imperative should be to create policy and systems that don't make healthcare completely unavailable for millions of people in the first place. AI and robots don't mean anything without access.
  - labrador 3y ago
    I'm imaging a world where everyone has health care and no one has to work. Would the world still be filled with turmoil and conflict?
    - notpachet 3y ago
      Probably.
- paxys 3y ago
  Go back a hundred years or so and describe advancements such as organ transplants, DNA sequencing, insulin, pacemakers, the MRI machine, mRNA and more to the common people and they would think we were all living in a post-disease utopia. In reality a very tiny percent of the world has access to any of this medical progress. Technological innovation is not enough. We also need the political will to ensure equitable distribution, otherwise it will create a yet bigger gulf between the haves and have nots.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    >In reality a very tiny percent of the world has access to any of this medical progress. 20% of the world is very tiny?
mullingitover 3y ago
Counterpoint to fears of losing the drudgery we're entitled to: once the value of labor has evaporated, and we still have the masses controlling the ballot box, we may finally achieve Fully Automated Luxury Communism[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communi...
- sunday_serif 3y ago
  We have already introduced so many automations into our lives in the past century. People from 100 years ago would assume that, with the tools we have today, we already would have reached “fully automated luxury communism”. But instead, we fall short of that utopia. The growth in consumption seems to always ever so slightly outpace innovation. A result of this relationship between consumption and innovation seems to be that there is always some drudgery for humans right beyond the edge of what we can automate. The drudgery serves to eek just a bit more out of the system in order to match the demands of consumption. Tomorrows drudgery will not look like todays, but it will remain drudgery all the same.
  - shanusmagnus 3y ago
    I think there's a lot of truth to this. I also suspect that, if you translated the median person from the US to the alternate-reality world of FALC they might look around in wonder; while the people native to the FALC reality would be as disaffected as many are today.
- failuser 3y ago
  For how long? The authoritarians have deeper pockets than ever and democrats (lower case d) are struggling.
- jampekka 3y ago
  And we have the, mostly commercial, propaganda machine controlling the masses. And regardless, if the masses would try to use the ballot box to make moves to something like FALC, it would be taken away, by force if necessary. This has been seen countless times. Looking at how wealth, capital and power are concentrating, we are well on our way to some sort of new feudal system.
paxys 3y ago
It's telling that this anti-automation and anti-AI movement is finally reaching its crescendo now that creative and white collar jobs are under threat. These same people writing books about the evils of AI sat back over the last few decades as countless factory jobs, farm jobs, retail jobs and even "lower class" intellectual jobs (like bookkeepers, travel agents and telephone operators) were automated away. "It's just how human progress works." "Think about the printing press/water mill" etc etc. Well the exact same argument applies now.
- deleted 3y ago
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- harerazer 3y ago
  To be fair, I don’t think its so much about white collar jobs being under threat as it is about creative jobs being under threat. Many creative pursuits are viewed as an outlet of human expression in a way that other jobs never were, and I think this is what is driving the new wave of the Resistance^TM
  - Nursie 3y ago
    I enjoyed seeing a meme the other day (rare for me to enjoy!) that summed it up as something like - "Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind". And I think that sums up the feeling quite well. I do agree that automation in general has not paid off in the way the utopians would predict - instead of freeing humanity from the need to work, we have disenfranchised large portions of the population. That said, more people than ever (in the west) are freed from manual labour, and are working historically shorter hours for better quality of life than ever before. But the fruits of our productivity gains are not distributed equally and it is all too easy to imagine a future in which it is the owners of the smart systems who reap all the rewards, with everyone else fighting for scraps.
    - 0thgen 3y ago
      it could just be that freeing humanity from the need to work takes longer than we thought are we worse off than we were before industrial automation? I thought the economics said the opposite (even if we exclude the eastern nations that benefits from western job loss from our utilitarian analysis here -- which we shouldn't) that meme was really good btw
zone411 3y ago
Here's a random tweet that I believe foreshadows the future: "I hate AI but also I've had the most insightful conversations with it about writing. It has been more honest, helpful and playful in workshopping story ideas than any real human I know. It's like chatting with a room full of actual writers and the value of that can't be ignored." I've seen similar sentiment from a few digital artists. Those who are very anti-AI will get left behind and be outcompeted by more productive AI users. There will be a lot of disruption. We should think how to best support people whose jobs will be irreplaceably lost because of AI. There is only so much content that the market wants. Eventually we should get some form of UBI as more and more people are affected.
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  I think it's better to think of what jobs will be spared when we have a general problem solver, or a general goal to action mapper. I can't think of a single one.
  - zone411 3y ago
    Athletes might be an example. But yes, once robotics advances, there won't be that many left.
    - ImHereToVote 3y ago
      Athletes only really have a job because of advertising money. Why advertise to homeless people?
      - heavyset_go 3y ago
        The rich will pay to watch the poors fight each other.
raincole 3y ago
Luddites in the age of AI don't exist. Until at least some data centers get burned down to the ground, comparing the current anti-AI movement to Luddites is just ridiculous.
- fnord123 3y ago
  Are you aware that the Writer's Guild of America were striking for 4 months against AI doing their jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_... There are also many law suits against AI works: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/books/authors-openai-lawsuit-chatgpt-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/books/authors-openai-laws... You really require that they resort to physical violence when they know fully that data in one DC will be backed up elsewhere so it will have no effect. From my pov, they are using the violence of the legal system to stop/slow AI.
  - blibble 3y ago
    if it puts a billion people out of work I don't think that having a few hundred data centres will help even slightly
  - raincole 3y ago
    > Are you aware that the Writer's Guild of America were striking Hollywood strikes are something that happens every ~5 years even without AI. [1] > There are also many law suits against AI works If they won then maybe that would count. Otherwise I see it as "PETA sued zoos". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hollywood_strikes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hollywood_strikes
  - supertimor 3y ago
    Are you really calling a legal strike violence? What options do the working class have left then, if even their legal rights are considered violence? This rhetoric is dangerous and completely anti-worker.
  - ytoawwhra92 3y ago
daniel-cussen 3y ago
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justanotherjoe 3y ago
from a maximization point of view, it's clear that there is some kind of maximum point in human welfare graph. It doesnt go up and up and up forever. At some point, we'll reach (reached?) the maximum and furyher progress will lower rather than increase the human experience. It's no surprise. But I think it's ultimately just local maxima. I dont see how this tech wont benefit us in the grand scheme of things.
- jampekka 3y ago
  The better of countries have already reached the point where increase in GDP doesn't increase wellbeing, and wellbeing is actually in decline.
  - livrem 3y ago
    This is probably one of the reasons why there is finally talk in some countries of moving on to a four-day week.
    - jampekka 3y ago
      At least in nordic countries there was a systematic (and even somewhat successful) political agenda to reduce working hours in the 1980s (when social democracy was the leading ideology). This has appeared sporadically in discussions as well but in practice during the neoliberal era the push has been to longer hours. IMHO having to work more when productivity and automation increases is quite a clear sign of a fundamentally broken economic system. https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs/ https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/on-the-phenomenon-of-bu...
      - livrem 3y ago
        Thanks! That is like a sad follow-up to Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness (1932). That essay ended "there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever"... but so far there are not many signs of things improving. https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
WalterBright 3y ago
Any country (including the US) that tries to prevent AI from replacing some jobs will find its economy buried by another country that did not.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  Conversely, a country that allows AI to replace too many jobs will find itself buried in masses of angry people with little to lose except their devalued lives.
  - jschveibinz 3y ago
    Both of these comments are excellent. However, countries don’t make decisions. Individuals (that are mentally capable) make decisions, within their economic framework, and the result emerges at the national or global level. Individuals will decide how to respond to AI, and we will see what happens. My guess, based on past adoptions of work-saving technologies, is that anyone capable of using AI to make their job easier will do so. And that may result in the elimination of other jobs.
    - andsoitis 3y ago
      > countries don’t make decisions. Individuals (that are mentally capable) make decisions, within their economic framework, and the result emerges at the national or global level. The economic framework, including rules, regulations, incentives, and penalties, amongst others, are set by government (“the country”). Also, if government decides to employ and find AI, that already pushes things in a certain direction. So yes, while individuals decide how to use AI, it is very much governments that have tremendous capacity and interest to bend and accelerate or decelerate its adoption patterns.
    - creer 3y ago
      Countries (governments) make lots of decisions as (governmental) entities with their own (effective) lives. Probably too many too fast. The problem is they often make the wrong decisions in spite of having very large and often educated staff. That's a problem. Someone asked recently what are the large problems facing humanity going forward and I think this is one of them. Government as entities will make lots of decisions in this case and no doubt most will be at counter-purpose. And this is a huge problem for humanity in general (because of the gross, terrible economic inefficiency of the process.) We must find far more effective ways for governments to think, deliberate, simulate, act or not act, implement, enforce.
creer 3y ago
The luddite example is one of suddenness: The owners see the massive advantage of mechanization and move in fast. The workers are blindsided - they don't have the time and spend all the time they do have in a ludicrous war. The regions are somewhat mono-industry which completes in making a giant mess. All in all the exact quandary not to get caught in. Now that they have demonstrated it, long ago, do we really have to fall in the same problem again and again? Just because it didn't happen in the US, or in this century, doesn't mean we can't learn from it. People at all level should do better using the time there is. For the ones (workers) to move up or away in their skills. For the others (businesses) to recognize a looming availability of human workforce which might be useful for some (other) business opportunity. For the third (governments) to - just in time - organize or encourage re-training at scale and in time. Trying to impose on each business to manage this whole world by itself is idiotic - normal business is tough and precarious enough. Trying to let each worker manage their own training is also insufficient: few people can optimally manage their own career at the same time as everything else. An example in this direction is, I believe, Denmark's "Flexicurity". Firms can adapt to follow their needs; while workers can in general principle retain earnings while they retrain; while the state orchestrates availability of training (which itself can be a big industry sector). No doubt not perfect for anyone, but the general idea sounds solid.
- tibbydudeza 3y ago
  I remember the mantra of some in the tech field of "no problem - just learn to code" when blue collar jobs in the manufacturing in the US was on the wane as production moved to cheaper locations overseas.
  - kdmccormick 3y ago
    I think that is a good point to bring up, but it is orthogonal. Production moving overseas is not the same as technological advancement. One can be against outsourcing but in favor of domestic technological progress.
    - tibbydudeza 3y ago
danShumway 3y ago
> Unlike the machines of the first Industrial Revolution, A.I. does not necessarily need more input; it can sustain itself. I'm not going to get into a bunch of debates about AI capabilities, and I don't tend to take an extreme stance one way or another what current AIs are capable of or will be capable of, but this sentence strikes me as very strange. Modern AI systems have pretty significant problems that will likely only be solved through heavy amounts of training and data curation, and maintaining good performance over time will likely require regular insertion of newer data. The idea that these systems are self-sufficient is fiction, they're not even close to reaching that point and they have serious gaps in capability. Maybe those gaps will get closed -- again, I'm not going to get into a debate about what AI can theoretically do in the future or how fast it will improve, that discussion is a little bit too speculative for my tastes. But while modern LLMs can do a lot of impressive stuff, the idea that we've hit some threshold where we aren't going to need to make further jumps and where those jumps won't require additional data or training or input is just buying into the worst of LLM hype. What we're seeing is that for many tasks that involve creative output, getting new data to put into LLMs to keep them current and up-to-date is important and is likely to continue to be important. And the typical shortcuts around that data (doing web searches, merging contexts) don't always work as well as retraining does (and also require their own up-to-date inputs). Again, not a commentary on whether LLMs are good at those tasks; just pointing out that AI does very definitively need continuous input for many of the highest-profile tasks people want to use it for. And the areas where it doesn't need that input are probably not in most cases the tasks people are most worried about being automated.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
The best way to prevent the future is to invent it. Paraphrasing Alan Kaye here. There's a certain inevitability to AI. The proverbial cat is out of the bag. Our choices are simply to be part of this revolution or to be left behind while the likes of China and others, not blocked by mildly hysterical ethical activists protesting their own irrelevance, plow ahead. It's really that simple. I call out China here because 1) they have lots of people actually working on AI. 2) a lot of the hardware we use for AI is actually being created there. 3) they have a history of getting stuff done once they decide they want to do something. Delaying tactics, insisting it is done right, getting upset about things changing, fearing the loss of control, and similar sentiments simply aren't constructive. It's not going to stop this. If you want it done right, make sure you are involved in the doing.
- fhd2 3y ago
  I'm not aware of anyone who wants to "prevent AI" - as incredibly ambiguous as that phrase is. What I suppose some people worry about is stuff like: 1. That they will have some means of feeding themselves and their families going forward 2. That they won't be at the whim of increasingly totalitarian (and arbitrary) governments with increasing power 3. That they will continue to find human connection 4. That they won't be overwhelmed by lots of crap content If someone _thinks_ there's a problem, there _is_ a problem: It's pretty tricky to talk people out of their fears. You can tell them to shut up, or you can address their fears and make them feel better about the future. That typically includes putting some checks and balances in place, as well as adjusting their expectations. China started doing mass surveillance early on, they're probably better at the technologies involved than the average country. By your logic, other countries should stop whining about it and start doing the same (or more), to not be left behind. I don't think everyone needs to do the worst thing that's technically possible to do. Sometimes those things aren't even all that beneficial for the success of a country, which I'd measure in citizen satisfaction and safety from hostile countries ultimately.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    I've seen many people on Twitter and Reddit calling for a total ban of image generators, because they take away jobs from artists. Yes - they think that even "ethical" models from Adobe and Getty should be banned.
yolkedgeek 3y ago
Being opposed to technology is something I don't understand. I'm a software engineer; and if some day AI can fully replace me, that is a "me" problem. I should be able to bring value, I should be able to adapt. When horses where THE way of transportation, there were hundreds of jobs, and thousands of workers supporting the horse industry. creating stables, blacksmiths, vets, etc. but in a matter of couple of decades, the horses were replaced by cars. now Imagine if those people started wrecking cars and car factories. over time, if someone is fully unable to adapt to progress and wants to keep going his way, he will be eliminated by the survival of the fittest. and those who were able to adapt, found other jobs that they could bring value in. For example many of the blacksmiths became mechanics. If an artist can lose his job to AI, it means he was never anything more than a weaker version of AI. you can't be angry because someone does your job better than you and for cheaper. Should we regulate and control the advancements, so something like the atomic bombs, like hiroshima doesn't happen with AI? Absolutely yes. Should we have our guards up and say AI is bad, it will be end of us, etc.? No. opposing progress is something that humans have always loved to do.
- jamil7 3y ago
  I think the problem isn't with technology, it's with a certain brand of technological “disruption” that doesn't actually advance anything forward but simply shifts work, energy and capital elsewhere, or worse, externalises costs, e.g. Uber.
- sp527 3y ago
  > 'Some with sociopathy may not realize that what they’re doing is wrong while others may simply not care. And sometimes, Dr. Coulter says, it can be both. “There’s just a total lack of empathy or recognizing that what they’ve done has hurt someone or it’s only benefited themselves,” he says. “And sometimes they might recognize what they’re doing is wrong, they just don’t care or they justify it to themselves.”' https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-disorder/ https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-dis...
- Kbelicius 3y ago
  > Being opposed to technology is something I don't understand. TFA article is about how Luddites were not opposed to technology per se.
psychoslave 3y ago
Directly make me think about Bill Joy: Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/ https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/ https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/12/02/bill-joy-why-the-future-doesnt-need-us/ https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/12/02/bill-joy-why-the-fut...
- shanusmagnus 3y ago
  Thanks for making that connection, Joy was an interesting voice back in the day. Curious: has he done anything in longer form than that Wired article to expand this idea?
sakex 3y ago
> Today, the word “Luddite” is used as an insult to anyone resistant to technological innovation Interesting, I never thought of the term as pejorative. I always thought of the movement as a kind of working-class heroes trying to navigate an uncertain future where rich people made them obsolete.
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  Along with being skilled laborers, Luddites were also proprietors and small business owners.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Basically a cross section of the, to cite Marxx, non-capital owning class os citizens. Aka, the vast majority of us. Only difference today, parts the groups thatbmade uo the Luddites back then are now actively cheering in those developments. Change isbinevitable, and in the long run society usually benefits as whole. The transition period is the problem, and on that front we are making no progress what so ever right now.
- davidgoudet 3y ago
  It's not pejorative for you if you are a liberal, for me it is pejorative, I see Luddites as people who damage important parts of production systems and threaten people's lives. I understand your point of view if you're from a first-world country and you never experienced the terror of having people interfering with the means of production.
  - 0dayz 3y ago
    That is not what the prejorative mean, I don't see the point in making this political.
    - davidgoudet 3y ago
      Everything is political my friend.
mbwgh 3y ago
Reading through these comments (and not being from the US), I think I'll play it safe and just never use this "luddite" term, ever.
0dayz 3y ago
Won't the end result be the same? In that the luddities were either extinct or had merged with the labor movement? Since that is what most people would in practice object to, a no safety net or regulation for the protection of their jobs.
hammon 3y ago
[dead]
killjoywashere 3y ago
tl;dr for those who didn't read it: capital sucks, think of the workers, regulate the tide of technology so .... workers can retool for another job, I guess? How do you regulate the tide?
raptor99 3y ago
https://archive.ph/ZUiC7 https://archive.ph/ZUiC7
roschdal 3y ago
The Luddites had it right all along.
jwie 3y ago
When a capitalist degrades his products to ensure profits it’s good for the economy and he’s a captain of industry. When the worker degrades technology to ensure a job he’s a Luddite and terrorist.
klik99 3y ago
I heard Brian Merchant on 99% Invisible and this take is slight historical revisionism, but I'm ok with that. It's revisionist because he's conflating the earlier movement when workers tried to negotiate with factory owners and organize with the Luddite movement. True - the failure of the first movement led to Ludditism out of desperation, but the groups are separate. Luddite literally is named after Ned Ludd smashing machinery, so it cannot be the name of the movement that was around organizing and negotiation because they only turned to smashing when organizing was made illegal. Basically workers tried to negotiate, were stymied, and a bunch of frustrated people started smashing machines, which caused a positive reaction from people so it started spreading and others started smashing stuff too. When I first heard of Ludditism it was with more nuance that it's used today - to be a Luddite was to rage against technology with the art of a bull in a china shop. It wasn't a blanket term against "anti-progress" like it is now, but rather a dumb approach to dealing with change. Of course now it is used just to shut down people who don't like technology, so that's why I'm ok with some amount of revisionism, since the way it's being used currently is revisionist itself. The only danger in conflating these legit concerns about automation with a violent movement is this implication that violence is the only way to bridge this gap, and I can see a strong argument that is was true back in those days, due to the Crown literally making any organizing and collective negotiation illegal, I strongly don't believe it's true today. I believe a violent reaction today would cause more harm to workers rights than help.
- barrysteve 3y ago
  Can I slighty revise your comment and take out the bit where it says you're okay with revisionism? Talk about a slippery slope...
  - klik99 3y ago
    I get it - I'm against revisionism in theory but practically there's a strong argument that all history is revisionist. I am conflicted, but I'm going to argue the "ok with revisionism" side of things - "Ok" being the weakest pro word, like I'd rate this 6 out of 9 if 1 was "totally against", 5 was "totally neutral" and 9 was "totally for". Part of us building the future is interpreting the past in a way that applies to our current world. For example - our modern western world was built on reinterpreting Romans and Greeks and idealizing their use of democracy. We had to throw away a lot of awful things they did to focus on just the good stuff. And even that period of history is being debated about how to interpret it in an attempt to understand who we are now - was it slave owning colonists who only prospered due to others labour or was it enlightened open thinkers who brought prosperity to the world, or was it a mix of those things or something else entirely. Revising the Luddite movement to include the earlier peaceful methods with the goal of saying healthy skepticism about technology is IMO a good thing - the Luddite movement specifically is tightly linked to the earlier movement so it's not a stretch to revise things it to include that whole chain of events. But I'd be lying if I wasn't annoyed when he said things that weren't technically correct during the 99% invisible interview. But it's also revisionist to use Luddite as bludgeon, so if people are going to remove any subtlety from a word, I'd rather it was revised in an helpful way.
avgcorrection 3y ago
> Brian Merchant’s new book, “Blood in the Machine,” argues that Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the rights of workers in the face of automation. And this isn't common knowledge?
- klik99 3y ago
  for people outside of tech, apparently not. I get it - all they know is this thing they've been called many times and just see it's a pejorative. It's a little grating when he says it was misused intentionally by tech overlords to paint concerned people as anti-progress (he says this in the 99% interview), but I get where he's coming from - some people use just as an insult to throw around, whether or not they know the source.
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    Judging by half the derogatory comments here, it's not something widely known within tech either. The most annoying thing about this place is that half the people here think they're immune to Dunning-Kruger and Gell-Man based on the hobby/profession they happen to have.
hnax 3y ago
Man's greatest advantage over (Generative) AI is his creativity, originality, ingenuity, spirituality and commonsense. Our defeat is sealed once we become more impressed with statistically produces results (including the obvious hallucinations and subtle lies by mission and omission), rather than trusting our God given qualities. We are and should not try stopping technology: we just have to sublime our human qualities and keep proving technologies' limitations (many of which are so obvious as requiring only some commonsense).
JSavageOne 3y ago
So essentially the modern framing of the luddite movement is a giant strawman argument mischaracterizing labor as being against technology when in reality they were just trying to figure out how to survive in a world where their work and livelihoods were made redundant practically overnight. The same will happen to modern wage labor due to AI. Automation will not be a sudden an obvious moment (eg. Google deciding to lay off every software engineer), rather it will be a slow hemorrhaging of the working class where vast swaths of workers will be laid off, and unable to find work of similar pay and stability ever again. The job market will continue to get exponentially more and more competitive, and the illusion of stability will collapse. This same trend has already been playing out over the last few decades, but the pace at which it's playing out is now accelerating exponentially. Because jobs will still exist, the status quo "just re-train them" optimists will remain ignorant and in denial, clinging to old models of the past. They'll say ridiculous things like "we can re-train the bus drivers by teaching them how to code", or "just teach illustrators how to prompt". Of course advancing technology should be a good thing, and with the modern technology we have now we already could afford a society of leisure and abundance. But our current capitalist system drains most people of the time/energy for big picture thinking (unrelated to making a buck), and our representative democracy (compared to direct or delegative democracy) further discourages political participation from regular people who aren't wealthy enough to have the abundance of leisure and financial security required to think about anything other than money. The result is that governments only serve the interests of the wealthy, while providing only an illusion of representing the masses. The rigidity and inflexibility of government systems means that nothing will change short of a revolution. The easiest and simplest policy change that can be made to alleviate job loss + destitution from AI and to reframe AI automation from a game with winners + losers to a game where everyone wins is to implement a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Think we can't afford a UBI? Fine. Start small, and peg it to the revenues of something specific like a Land Value Tax (Henry George's "citizen's dividend"). Watch society not collapse and everyone be happier (eg. like when COVID forced employers to allow more remote work) as society collectively moves up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The increasing abundance of leisure will start the flywheel towards increasing political participation and representation of the people, systemic political reform towards delegative democracy (liquid democracy), and the next evolution of the human species in the "AI Age". Until then, the only way to safeguard yourself from the AI automation wave is to achieve financial independence and to fully embrace AI, since workers who know how to leverage the latest AI tools will displace those who don't.

238 points by Hooke 3y ago

cm2012 3y ago

The only thing that ever makes the human condition better in the long run is increased productivity. If luddites were left in charge we'd all be living like the 1800s.

pixl97 3y ago
Ugh, tired of hearing this same old shit. Do you believe the luddites would have burned the looms if instead this offer would have been on the table "Hello, instead of being starving beggars in the street, we will offer you retraining, and provide meals while doing so" Oh, look, a social safety net actually can benefit capital owners and keep their factories from burning.
- cm2012 3y ago
  They didn't want retraining as mill workers. It was much lower paid work. They wanted their old jobs which didn't exist anymore. I agree that the government should absolutely take care of people who lose the capitalism lottery.
  - ImHereToVote 3y ago
    They just wanted to provide for their families. The reason you don't hear about the ones that didn't is because dead men tell no tales.
  - bigpeopleareold 3y ago
    I think there is a presumption that there is a caring government to take away the duties of maintaining one's livelihood, a livelihood formulated without the modern, post-Revolution (the French one) impulses that we live with today. Current western governments (particularly the social democratic Europe) are in part the result of effects of capitalism, which in the course of modern history, we can't escape so easily (I am sort of alluding to the work of Mark Fisher here.)

pininja 3y ago

History is written by the victors. I hadn’t heard about the Luddite movement until recently but had known of the slang for years. This book argues we might see the term reclaimed by those who have suddenly lost value from the emergence of AI.

barryrandall 3y ago
History is written by whoever signs the check, and the popular perception of the Luddites reflects that.

w_for_wumbo 3y ago

There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most important matter is not whether we use technology, but how we treat our fellow humans. By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. We have a mandate for us and our future generations to learn from the lessons of history and stand together as human beings to ensure that the value that we have created is respected and shared with those who created it. We don't deserve the scraps that fall to us, we deserve a seat at the damn table.

mouse_ 3y ago
The people in positions of power are going to treat their fellow humans as poorly as they can get away with. That's how they got their positions of power.
- its_ethan 3y ago
  I think you'd find that, on average, "as poorly as they can get away with" actually does mean that they treat people quite well. I'm not sure what hierarchies you've been a part of where people actively trying to treat people poorly leads to their success - I'd wager those are few in far between in reality, and over represented in media. Maybe you're cynical about a few high profile companies or how U.S. politics appears, but positions of power exist everywhere in society, and society wouldn't be even remotely functional if people followed your assumed behavior.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    You've never heard of sweatshops or labor trafficking?
  - Ensorceled 3y ago
    Google "wage theft US" ... I think some people treat people well, but I've met too many small business owners who bristle at paying minimum wage.

kwhitefoot 3y ago

I thought that this had been the conventional view for a while now. Certainly it is what i have believed for many years, that the Luddites were reacting to iniquitous working practices and market forces.

NoThankYouTho 3y ago
You are definitely correct, but there is a popular perception that Luddites are just reactionarily "opposing progress" because it hurts their own personal interests.
- alexb_ 3y ago
  Those are actually both the same thing. Luddites were being reactionary, they were opposing progress because it hurt their own personal interests, and it was 100% rational for them to do this (and thus should be expected).
- hef19898 3y ago
  And the advoctaes for this kind of change are only pushing it, against all resistence and withbany means, because it serves their personal interest. Difference being, the Ludditea had their livelihoods and health to loose. The other just a bunch of even more money earned on the backs of an exploited and abused workforce.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  "Luddites were reacting to iniquitous working practices and market forces." is the same thing as "reactionarily opposing progress because it hurts their own personal interests."
  - NoThankYouTho 3y ago
    I meant to stress the "opposing progress" part of my comment. The two things are only the same if there was a universal, objective definition of progress with bettering humanity. Imposing a subjective yet "active" intent like opposing progress just obfuscates context and nuance around what's happening.

jacquesm 3y ago

At least the Luddites eventually had other work to go to. This time around I'm not so sure of that.

ImHereToVote 3y ago
AI can't be used for fuel in a power plant. That's where we will still dominate.

lolinder 3y ago

This version of the Luddites is the one I was taught in my history classes—in both HS and college my teachers were careful to emphasize that the colloquial usage and the actual movement are only loosely related, and we discussed how the Luddites weren't rejecting technology per se so much as they were acting out of desperation to preserve their way of life. This is certainly something worth learning from today, and a new book bringing this interpretation to more people is worthwhile, but it's not a novel take on the movement, just an attempt to reclaim the colloquial phrase.

czl 3y ago
> they were acting out of desperation to preserve their way of life Should I have the right to preserve my way of life when it imposes costs on others?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Should you have the right to press for changes that impose a cost on others?
  - winwang 3y ago
    Sure, then I won't "press". I'll just release a product and see if the market wants it.
    - throwanem 3y ago
      So it's okay to perform the harmful act, knowing the harm it will cause, as long as you leave yourself the out of being able to say it'd have come to nothing had others declined to participate? I once heard a heroin dealer make a similar claim.
      - kaashif 3y ago
        So you're now comparing AI use to heroin use? Not the most accurate comparison if you ask me.

cynicalsecurity 3y ago

I'm not observing a situation of people massively losing their jobs or losing money. If you do, feel free to share your experience. So far, the AI technology has been a nice toy/support for the people.

lewhoo 3y ago
This is true but the "prophecy" is this is unavoidable due to rapid development and no ceiling in sight.
claudiulodro 3y ago
Anecdotally I hear that freelance article writing dried up pretty quickly now that you can just ask GPT "write an article about my dry cleaning company in Phoenix" and similar bottom-of-the-barrel content tasks.
2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
For the first time in history a machine can come up with novel ideas. Up until now, you were only really automating away the boring stuff.
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  Since when can a computer come up with a novel idea? Do not be fooled by GPT, it's a fancy Markov chain hooked up to training data. It cannot come up with anything that wasn't already in its data set.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rafaelero 3y ago
    GPT-4 is around the 99th percentile on creative thinking.[1] [1] https://www.umt.edu/news/2023/07/070523test.php https://www.umt.edu/news/2023/07/070523test.php
  - 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago

alexb_ 3y ago

Opposing technological development because it might cost people jobs is how you fall behind as a country. The last thing I want is for China to become the leader of the world because they actually pushed forward with technological progress.

lolinder 3y ago
I think you completely missed the article's thesis. It's not about whether people lose their jobs, it's about whether people lose their livelihoods. Millions of lost jobs is inevitable, but millions of ruined lives is unacceptable. > In the era of A.I., we have another opportunity to decide whether automation will create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls. One 1812 letter from the Luddites described their mission as fighting against “all Machinery hurtful to Commonality.” That remains a strong standard by which to judge technological gains.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  I don't think AI and automation actually matters here. You just have a strong welfare safety net so anyone is caught regardless of how they got there. And then you don't have to do wacky accounting about jobs replaced by AI.
  - mm263 3y ago
    AI is already here. Advancements in the next 5-10 years are going to be unprecedented. Will we be able to spin up a safety net at the same pace?
lewhoo 3y ago
I think it's clear that China is not the one to push for development of something that may flip the current state of power between government and the people.

randomcarbloke 3y ago

The rewriting of history shows no sign of slowing I see.

fredoliveira 3y ago
Care to expand?
- randomcarbloke 3y ago
  As evidenced by this thread; convenient revisionism by resentful ideologues, aligning luddites with the flavour-of-the-month outrage...be it working conditions, unionisation, etc. The connotations of "luddite" are apt because they're accurate, we have evidence of their activities but also documented evidence of their intentions and beliefs.

coolhand2120 3y ago

People are happy to use tech like wix to build a web page because building web pages is hard. Virtually every designer, artist, writer, and musician, were all very happy to use wix even though it cost the jobs of legions of developers. “Finally I can do what these nerds can do without their help”. I really don’t see the difference.

abakker 3y ago
I love this so much. The reality of _all_ technology is that it allows individuals to do more themselves. It condenses the knowledge domain to accomplish a task. In my mind, there are no downsides in allowing individuals more leverage. The real downsides are with the orthogonal problem of what productivity means in civil society. High productivity through technology is perfectly human - we're tool-builders and tool-makers. But, productivity does not absolve us of our responsibility to each other. People who suggest we should not use tools often justify their point of view with assertions of cost born by others. I am suspicious of this argument because the opportunity cost of _not_ letting people use the best tools available could be much greater. For example, had we not developed tools to create mRNA vaccines, many lives would have been lost to Covid that were saved. We don't know yet what AI will enable, but I'd rather we find out what people can achieve than focus on muddying the waters between productivity and society.
- lewhoo 3y ago
  Sure, if you look at artificial intelligence as a tool (perhaps there is still no reason not to), but the end goal here is not to assist but to replace, isn't it ?
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - abakker 3y ago
    I guess I tend to see it as an augmentation simply because I don't see much evidence of it originating expertise. A side comment here is that I am equally skeptical that leveraging copyright work as training data is fair use. if the objective is to retrieve original copyright work, then I think its fair use, but if the goal is to draw me campaign poster in the style of Shepard Fairey, I'm not that sympathetic. If we use AI to replace the creation of copyright free derivative works, it isn't clear what the objection should be?

Animats 3y ago

They came for the manual laborers, and I was not a manual laborer, so I did nothing. Then they came for the skilled craftsmen, and I was not a skilled craftsman, so I did nothing. Then they came for the clerks and bookeepers, and I was not a clerk or a bookkeeper, so I did nothing. Now they've come for the chattering classes, and there is no one left to speak for me.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Sort of backwards. First they came for the writers and illustrators, and I did nothing because I'm not a writer or an illustrator. Then they came for the musicians, and I did nothing because I only listen to music. Then they came for the text-dependent professional classes, and I did nothing because I'm not one of those people. They they came for the programmers, and the plumbers sat around laughing saying "and you thought you were so much better than us!"
- jschveibinz 3y ago
  “They” is “we.”
- nojvek 3y ago
  If AI can truly reason and build complex applications - I.e it has mastered composition and causality, then AI would have a full mental map of how commercial and residential buildings work. How every pipe fitting links to each other. In that case plumbers aren’t needed for small things since a user could state their problem to a smartphone and AI could guide them to the correct fix as it debugs the users house. Same with construction or doctors or teachers. If AI can truly learn and reason the physical world, then it doesn’t mean much to be human. What is being a human in terms of labor? A 100 watt 80kg biological agent with general intelligence that can learn and follow steps. With eyes and ears they sense, with legs they move and and with hands they apply fine motor skills to move other objects. The whole point of AI is to build cheaper labor that follows instructions, never sleeps, never forgets, replaceable if broken. The rich and powerful will 100% get more rich and powerful, the question is how well that prosperity will be shared with the rest. It could be that some powerful nations say let’s go kill entire other continents and take their land with our robot and drone army. Globally 35 billion barrels of oil / yr are consumed. Thats 1700 kWh/barell * 35B = 59.5TWh/year = 6.8 TW. This means if someone could make human equivalent robots that take gasoline as energy, they’d have an army of 68 billion human-like robots.

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janalsncm 3y ago

99% invisible had Brian Merchant on recently. I agree with him except on the point that “Luddite” can be reclaimed. In an ideal world that would be possible, but in practical terms Luddite means a person who is against technological change. If you want to defend Luddite positions you don’t need to defend the term itself. Then the correct retort would be I’m not a Luddite I’m an X where X is something intuitive and short.

zlg_codes 3y ago
I like to characterize my approach to technology as "informed carefulness". So maybe "I'm a cautious adopter of technology. I adopt what works, what improves my life, and respects my rights." The violation of people's trust through the use of telemetry is precisely what turned me skeptical of modern day stuff. There's a lot of stuff that I would probably use, if it wasn't hellbent on learning the color of my underwear, how often I snore, or what products I'm interested in. You won't catch me with a Ring camera, any Alexa device, I use uBlock, etc. There is so much more I would be comfortable using in this world of technology if there was a modicum of mutual respect.
- couchand 3y ago
  > There is so much more I would be comfortable using in this world of technology if there was a modicum of mutual respect. This sentiment was likely shared by many of the original Luddites.
- brvsft 3y ago
  This reminds me that I find it hilarious when they ask permission to collect more data on you so they can make the ads "more relevant." This is close to their version of mutual respect, "We'll show you the ads you WANT to see."
  - chromoblob 3y ago
    Note the ambiguity: more relevant ads as profitable for the ad provider vs. offers more relevant (useful) to you.

adasdasdas 3y ago

> Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the rights of workers above the inequitable profitability of machines Being against the inequitable profitability of machines is just as dumb as being against technology, especially outside of a socialist context which this definitely was. It's basically crying that someone else is doing something better than you. In fact, I think being against technology wholesale is a much more defensible position since it creates an arms race, its unpredictable, it forces everyone into a lifestyle, etc.

heavyset_go 3y ago
> It's basically crying that someone else is doing something better than you. That "someone else" used state power to beat you, imprison you and starve your family if you dared to organize with other workers. Meanwhile, literal conspiracies of factory owners had full legal protection and the ability to write laws, including laws that gave the death penalty for machine breaking.
- adasdasdas 3y ago
  Source for this please > That "someone else" used state power to beat you, imprison you and starve your family if you dared to organize with other workers. Luddites pre-dated socialism and worker organization. Unless you mean, organizing a terrorist organization to blow up factories.
  - heavyset_go 3y ago
    > Source for this please The Combination Act of 1799, and following Combination Acts, made it illegal for workers to organize in any sense[1][2]. > Luddites pre-dated socialism and worker organization They pre-date Marxist socialism, but the term socialism predates Marx and has had various meanings before then. Marx chose to adopt the existing term to describe his concept of socialism. It's weird for you to say that Luddites pre-dated worker organization, when workers had organized for collective bargaining in the past, and owners made it illegal. It's also interesting considering the history of workers organized in guilds that certainly predate the Luddites by centuries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_Act_1799 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_Act_1799 [2] https://www.marxists.org/history/england/combination-laws/index.htm https://www.marxists.org/history/england/combination-laws/in...

Aunche 3y ago

> Today, the word “Luddite” is used as an insult to anyone resistant to technological innovation; it suggests ignoramuses, sticks in the mud, obstacles to progress. But a new book by the journalist and author Brian Merchant, titled “Blood in the Machine,” argues that Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the rights of workers above the inequitable profitability of machines. Just because Luddites were sympathetic doesn't change the fact that they were wrong. They didn't care for the welfare of workers in general so much as they were looking out for themselves. It did not matter to them that hundreds of thousands of peasants chose to move to find work in the cities because it was better than life in the countryside and by destroying machinery, Luddites were taking away their livelihoods while the factories were shut down. It's usually at this time that someone will bring up the enclosure of common land as the reason why people were forced out of the countryside, but that doesn't change that factory life was still offered a better alternative for a lot of people. The privatization of fertile land was inevitable with a growing population. Without the new factory jobs, even more people would be stuck as serfs like they were in China or Russia at the time.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
90% of people ever to exist were only looking out for themselves. The luddite claim that the industrial revolution made their life worse was absolutely not wrong, even if their actions were selfish.
- hexage1814 3y ago
  >The luddite claim that the industrial revolution made their life worse was absolutely not wrong So what? How is this even relevant? ATM machines also made the lives of bank tellers worse cause they lost their jobs. As well as the countless automations that happened. "Oh, better stop all technological progress to ensure I have a job", it doesn't work like this, it never did, and anyone who tried this failed miserably because it is selfish and it doesn't work. What matters is that society as a whole was better after every automation. Honestly this whole whining about automation NOW is mainly white collar workers, such as journalists and artists, throwing a hissy fit and asking for special protection because they feel like their job is """"really special"""" unlike other peoples job, it's not like other people have bills to pay and stuff.

type0 3y ago

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UtopiaPunk 3y ago

Another book with a similar premise is " Breaking Things at Work:The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job" https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-work https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-w... This book came out in 2021, so there's definitely a trend to look back at the Luddites, investigate what their movement and actions were about, and apply some of those ideas to today. I actually just happened to pick this up in a local bookshop on a whim this weekend, but haven't read it yet.

pkage 3y ago

https://archive.ph/Bqglw https://archive.ph/Bqglw

labrador 3y ago

I like to imagine a world where people don't have to work or worry about health care. It's all done by AI and robots. People are free to pursue their hobbies and other interests. How would we treat each then? Would we still be in terrible conflict with hate and prejudice prevalent?

phillipcarter 3y ago
In the US at least, the imperative should be to create policy and systems that don't make healthcare completely unavailable for millions of people in the first place. AI and robots don't mean anything without access.
- labrador 3y ago
  I'm imaging a world where everyone has health care and no one has to work. Would the world still be filled with turmoil and conflict?
  - notpachet 3y ago
    Probably.
paxys 3y ago
Go back a hundred years or so and describe advancements such as organ transplants, DNA sequencing, insulin, pacemakers, the MRI machine, mRNA and more to the common people and they would think we were all living in a post-disease utopia. In reality a very tiny percent of the world has access to any of this medical progress. Technological innovation is not enough. We also need the political will to ensure equitable distribution, otherwise it will create a yet bigger gulf between the haves and have nots.
- pixl97 3y ago
  >In reality a very tiny percent of the world has access to any of this medical progress. 20% of the world is very tiny?

mullingitover 3y ago

Counterpoint to fears of losing the drudgery we're entitled to: once the value of labor has evaporated, and we still have the masses controlling the ballot box, we may finally achieve Fully Automated Luxury Communism[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communi...

sunday_serif 3y ago
We have already introduced so many automations into our lives in the past century. People from 100 years ago would assume that, with the tools we have today, we already would have reached “fully automated luxury communism”. But instead, we fall short of that utopia. The growth in consumption seems to always ever so slightly outpace innovation. A result of this relationship between consumption and innovation seems to be that there is always some drudgery for humans right beyond the edge of what we can automate. The drudgery serves to eek just a bit more out of the system in order to match the demands of consumption. Tomorrows drudgery will not look like todays, but it will remain drudgery all the same.
- shanusmagnus 3y ago
  I think there's a lot of truth to this. I also suspect that, if you translated the median person from the US to the alternate-reality world of FALC they might look around in wonder; while the people native to the FALC reality would be as disaffected as many are today.
failuser 3y ago
For how long? The authoritarians have deeper pockets than ever and democrats (lower case d) are struggling.
jampekka 3y ago
And we have the, mostly commercial, propaganda machine controlling the masses. And regardless, if the masses would try to use the ballot box to make moves to something like FALC, it would be taken away, by force if necessary. This has been seen countless times. Looking at how wealth, capital and power are concentrating, we are well on our way to some sort of new feudal system.

paxys 3y ago

It's telling that this anti-automation and anti-AI movement is finally reaching its crescendo now that creative and white collar jobs are under threat. These same people writing books about the evils of AI sat back over the last few decades as countless factory jobs, farm jobs, retail jobs and even "lower class" intellectual jobs (like bookkeepers, travel agents and telephone operators) were automated away. "It's just how human progress works." "Think about the printing press/water mill" etc etc. Well the exact same argument applies now.

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harerazer 3y ago
To be fair, I don’t think its so much about white collar jobs being under threat as it is about creative jobs being under threat. Many creative pursuits are viewed as an outlet of human expression in a way that other jobs never were, and I think this is what is driving the new wave of the Resistance^TM
- Nursie 3y ago
  I enjoyed seeing a meme the other day (rare for me to enjoy!) that summed it up as something like - "Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind". And I think that sums up the feeling quite well. I do agree that automation in general has not paid off in the way the utopians would predict - instead of freeing humanity from the need to work, we have disenfranchised large portions of the population. That said, more people than ever (in the west) are freed from manual labour, and are working historically shorter hours for better quality of life than ever before. But the fruits of our productivity gains are not distributed equally and it is all too easy to imagine a future in which it is the owners of the smart systems who reap all the rewards, with everyone else fighting for scraps.
  - 0thgen 3y ago
    it could just be that freeing humanity from the need to work takes longer than we thought are we worse off than we were before industrial automation? I thought the economics said the opposite (even if we exclude the eastern nations that benefits from western job loss from our utilitarian analysis here -- which we shouldn't) that meme was really good btw

zone411 3y ago

Here's a random tweet that I believe foreshadows the future: "I hate AI but also I've had the most insightful conversations with it about writing. It has been more honest, helpful and playful in workshopping story ideas than any real human I know. It's like chatting with a room full of actual writers and the value of that can't be ignored." I've seen similar sentiment from a few digital artists. Those who are very anti-AI will get left behind and be outcompeted by more productive AI users. There will be a lot of disruption. We should think how to best support people whose jobs will be irreplaceably lost because of AI. There is only so much content that the market wants. Eventually we should get some form of UBI as more and more people are affected.

ImHereToVote 3y ago
I think it's better to think of what jobs will be spared when we have a general problem solver, or a general goal to action mapper. I can't think of a single one.
- zone411 3y ago
  Athletes might be an example. But yes, once robotics advances, there won't be that many left.
  - ImHereToVote 3y ago
    Athletes only really have a job because of advertising money. Why advertise to homeless people?
    - heavyset_go 3y ago
      The rich will pay to watch the poors fight each other.

raincole 3y ago

Luddites in the age of AI don't exist. Until at least some data centers get burned down to the ground, comparing the current anti-AI movement to Luddites is just ridiculous.

fnord123 3y ago
Are you aware that the Writer's Guild of America were striking for 4 months against AI doing their jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_... There are also many law suits against AI works: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/books/authors-openai-lawsuit-chatgpt-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/books/authors-openai-laws... You really require that they resort to physical violence when they know fully that data in one DC will be backed up elsewhere so it will have no effect. From my pov, they are using the violence of the legal system to stop/slow AI.
- blibble 3y ago
  if it puts a billion people out of work I don't think that having a few hundred data centres will help even slightly
- raincole 3y ago
  > Are you aware that the Writer's Guild of America were striking Hollywood strikes are something that happens every ~5 years even without AI. [1] > There are also many law suits against AI works If they won then maybe that would count. Otherwise I see it as "PETA sued zoos". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hollywood_strikes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hollywood_strikes
- supertimor 3y ago
  Are you really calling a legal strike violence? What options do the working class have left then, if even their legal rights are considered violence? This rhetoric is dangerous and completely anti-worker.
- ytoawwhra92 3y ago

daniel-cussen 3y ago

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justanotherjoe 3y ago

from a maximization point of view, it's clear that there is some kind of maximum point in human welfare graph. It doesnt go up and up and up forever. At some point, we'll reach (reached?) the maximum and furyher progress will lower rather than increase the human experience. It's no surprise. But I think it's ultimately just local maxima. I dont see how this tech wont benefit us in the grand scheme of things.

jampekka 3y ago
The better of countries have already reached the point where increase in GDP doesn't increase wellbeing, and wellbeing is actually in decline.
- livrem 3y ago
  This is probably one of the reasons why there is finally talk in some countries of moving on to a four-day week.
  - jampekka 3y ago
    At least in nordic countries there was a systematic (and even somewhat successful) political agenda to reduce working hours in the 1980s (when social democracy was the leading ideology). This has appeared sporadically in discussions as well but in practice during the neoliberal era the push has been to longer hours. IMHO having to work more when productivity and automation increases is quite a clear sign of a fundamentally broken economic system. https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs/ https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/on-the-phenomenon-of-bu...
    - livrem 3y ago
      Thanks! That is like a sad follow-up to Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness (1932). That essay ended "there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever"... but so far there are not many signs of things improving. https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

WalterBright 3y ago

Any country (including the US) that tries to prevent AI from replacing some jobs will find its economy buried by another country that did not.

Modified3019 3y ago
Conversely, a country that allows AI to replace too many jobs will find itself buried in masses of angry people with little to lose except their devalued lives.
- jschveibinz 3y ago
  Both of these comments are excellent. However, countries don’t make decisions. Individuals (that are mentally capable) make decisions, within their economic framework, and the result emerges at the national or global level. Individuals will decide how to respond to AI, and we will see what happens. My guess, based on past adoptions of work-saving technologies, is that anyone capable of using AI to make their job easier will do so. And that may result in the elimination of other jobs.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > countries don’t make decisions. Individuals (that are mentally capable) make decisions, within their economic framework, and the result emerges at the national or global level. The economic framework, including rules, regulations, incentives, and penalties, amongst others, are set by government (“the country”). Also, if government decides to employ and find AI, that already pushes things in a certain direction. So yes, while individuals decide how to use AI, it is very much governments that have tremendous capacity and interest to bend and accelerate or decelerate its adoption patterns.
  - creer 3y ago
    Countries (governments) make lots of decisions as (governmental) entities with their own (effective) lives. Probably too many too fast. The problem is they often make the wrong decisions in spite of having very large and often educated staff. That's a problem. Someone asked recently what are the large problems facing humanity going forward and I think this is one of them. Government as entities will make lots of decisions in this case and no doubt most will be at counter-purpose. And this is a huge problem for humanity in general (because of the gross, terrible economic inefficiency of the process.) We must find far more effective ways for governments to think, deliberate, simulate, act or not act, implement, enforce.

creer 3y ago

The luddite example is one of suddenness: The owners see the massive advantage of mechanization and move in fast. The workers are blindsided - they don't have the time and spend all the time they do have in a ludicrous war. The regions are somewhat mono-industry which completes in making a giant mess. All in all the exact quandary not to get caught in. Now that they have demonstrated it, long ago, do we really have to fall in the same problem again and again? Just because it didn't happen in the US, or in this century, doesn't mean we can't learn from it. People at all level should do better using the time there is. For the ones (workers) to move up or away in their skills. For the others (businesses) to recognize a looming availability of human workforce which might be useful for some (other) business opportunity. For the third (governments) to - just in time - organize or encourage re-training at scale and in time. Trying to impose on each business to manage this whole world by itself is idiotic - normal business is tough and precarious enough. Trying to let each worker manage their own training is also insufficient: few people can optimally manage their own career at the same time as everything else. An example in this direction is, I believe, Denmark's "Flexicurity". Firms can adapt to follow their needs; while workers can in general principle retain earnings while they retrain; while the state orchestrates availability of training (which itself can be a big industry sector). No doubt not perfect for anyone, but the general idea sounds solid.

tibbydudeza 3y ago
I remember the mantra of some in the tech field of "no problem - just learn to code" when blue collar jobs in the manufacturing in the US was on the wane as production moved to cheaper locations overseas.
- kdmccormick 3y ago
  I think that is a good point to bring up, but it is orthogonal. Production moving overseas is not the same as technological advancement. One can be against outsourcing but in favor of domestic technological progress.
  - tibbydudeza 3y ago

danShumway 3y ago

> Unlike the machines of the first Industrial Revolution, A.I. does not necessarily need more input; it can sustain itself. I'm not going to get into a bunch of debates about AI capabilities, and I don't tend to take an extreme stance one way or another what current AIs are capable of or will be capable of, but this sentence strikes me as very strange. Modern AI systems have pretty significant problems that will likely only be solved through heavy amounts of training and data curation, and maintaining good performance over time will likely require regular insertion of newer data. The idea that these systems are self-sufficient is fiction, they're not even close to reaching that point and they have serious gaps in capability. Maybe those gaps will get closed -- again, I'm not going to get into a debate about what AI can theoretically do in the future or how fast it will improve, that discussion is a little bit too speculative for my tastes. But while modern LLMs can do a lot of impressive stuff, the idea that we've hit some threshold where we aren't going to need to make further jumps and where those jumps won't require additional data or training or input is just buying into the worst of LLM hype. What we're seeing is that for many tasks that involve creative output, getting new data to put into LLMs to keep them current and up-to-date is important and is likely to continue to be important. And the typical shortcuts around that data (doing web searches, merging contexts) don't always work as well as retraining does (and also require their own up-to-date inputs). Again, not a commentary on whether LLMs are good at those tasks; just pointing out that AI does very definitively need continuous input for many of the highest-profile tasks people want to use it for. And the areas where it doesn't need that input are probably not in most cases the tasks people are most worried about being automated.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

The best way to prevent the future is to invent it. Paraphrasing Alan Kaye here. There's a certain inevitability to AI. The proverbial cat is out of the bag. Our choices are simply to be part of this revolution or to be left behind while the likes of China and others, not blocked by mildly hysterical ethical activists protesting their own irrelevance, plow ahead. It's really that simple. I call out China here because 1) they have lots of people actually working on AI. 2) a lot of the hardware we use for AI is actually being created there. 3) they have a history of getting stuff done once they decide they want to do something. Delaying tactics, insisting it is done right, getting upset about things changing, fearing the loss of control, and similar sentiments simply aren't constructive. It's not going to stop this. If you want it done right, make sure you are involved in the doing.

fhd2 3y ago
I'm not aware of anyone who wants to "prevent AI" - as incredibly ambiguous as that phrase is. What I suppose some people worry about is stuff like: 1. That they will have some means of feeding themselves and their families going forward 2. That they won't be at the whim of increasingly totalitarian (and arbitrary) governments with increasing power 3. That they will continue to find human connection 4. That they won't be overwhelmed by lots of crap content If someone _thinks_ there's a problem, there _is_ a problem: It's pretty tricky to talk people out of their fears. You can tell them to shut up, or you can address their fears and make them feel better about the future. That typically includes putting some checks and balances in place, as well as adjusting their expectations. China started doing mass surveillance early on, they're probably better at the technologies involved than the average country. By your logic, other countries should stop whining about it and start doing the same (or more), to not be left behind. I don't think everyone needs to do the worst thing that's technically possible to do. Sometimes those things aren't even all that beneficial for the success of a country, which I'd measure in citizen satisfaction and safety from hostile countries ultimately.
- zirgs 3y ago
  I've seen many people on Twitter and Reddit calling for a total ban of image generators, because they take away jobs from artists. Yes - they think that even "ethical" models from Adobe and Getty should be banned.

yolkedgeek 3y ago

Being opposed to technology is something I don't understand. I'm a software engineer; and if some day AI can fully replace me, that is a "me" problem. I should be able to bring value, I should be able to adapt. When horses where THE way of transportation, there were hundreds of jobs, and thousands of workers supporting the horse industry. creating stables, blacksmiths, vets, etc. but in a matter of couple of decades, the horses were replaced by cars. now Imagine if those people started wrecking cars and car factories. over time, if someone is fully unable to adapt to progress and wants to keep going his way, he will be eliminated by the survival of the fittest. and those who were able to adapt, found other jobs that they could bring value in. For example many of the blacksmiths became mechanics. If an artist can lose his job to AI, it means he was never anything more than a weaker version of AI. you can't be angry because someone does your job better than you and for cheaper. Should we regulate and control the advancements, so something like the atomic bombs, like hiroshima doesn't happen with AI? Absolutely yes. Should we have our guards up and say AI is bad, it will be end of us, etc.? No. opposing progress is something that humans have always loved to do.

jamil7 3y ago
I think the problem isn't with technology, it's with a certain brand of technological “disruption” that doesn't actually advance anything forward but simply shifts work, energy and capital elsewhere, or worse, externalises costs, e.g. Uber.
sp527 3y ago
> 'Some with sociopathy may not realize that what they’re doing is wrong while others may simply not care. And sometimes, Dr. Coulter says, it can be both. “There’s just a total lack of empathy or recognizing that what they’ve done has hurt someone or it’s only benefited themselves,” he says. “And sometimes they might recognize what they’re doing is wrong, they just don’t care or they justify it to themselves.”' https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-disorder/ https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-dis...
Kbelicius 3y ago
> Being opposed to technology is something I don't understand. TFA article is about how Luddites were not opposed to technology per se.

psychoslave 3y ago

Directly make me think about Bill Joy: Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/ https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/ https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/12/02/bill-joy-why-the-future-doesnt-need-us/ https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/12/02/bill-joy-why-the-fut...

shanusmagnus 3y ago
Thanks for making that connection, Joy was an interesting voice back in the day. Curious: has he done anything in longer form than that Wired article to expand this idea?

sakex 3y ago

> Today, the word “Luddite” is used as an insult to anyone resistant to technological innovation Interesting, I never thought of the term as pejorative. I always thought of the movement as a kind of working-class heroes trying to navigate an uncertain future where rich people made them obsolete.

heavyset_go 3y ago
Along with being skilled laborers, Luddites were also proprietors and small business owners.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Basically a cross section of the, to cite Marxx, non-capital owning class os citizens. Aka, the vast majority of us. Only difference today, parts the groups thatbmade uo the Luddites back then are now actively cheering in those developments. Change isbinevitable, and in the long run society usually benefits as whole. The transition period is the problem, and on that front we are making no progress what so ever right now.
davidgoudet 3y ago
It's not pejorative for you if you are a liberal, for me it is pejorative, I see Luddites as people who damage important parts of production systems and threaten people's lives. I understand your point of view if you're from a first-world country and you never experienced the terror of having people interfering with the means of production.
- 0dayz 3y ago
  That is not what the prejorative mean, I don't see the point in making this political.
  - davidgoudet 3y ago
    Everything is political my friend.

mbwgh 3y ago

Reading through these comments (and not being from the US), I think I'll play it safe and just never use this "luddite" term, ever.

0dayz 3y ago

Won't the end result be the same? In that the luddities were either extinct or had merged with the labor movement? Since that is what most people would in practice object to, a no safety net or regulation for the protection of their jobs.

hammon 3y ago

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killjoywashere 3y ago

tl;dr for those who didn't read it: capital sucks, think of the workers, regulate the tide of technology so .... workers can retool for another job, I guess? How do you regulate the tide?

raptor99 3y ago

https://archive.ph/ZUiC7 https://archive.ph/ZUiC7

roschdal 3y ago

The Luddites had it right all along.

jwie 3y ago

When a capitalist degrades his products to ensure profits it’s good for the economy and he’s a captain of industry. When the worker degrades technology to ensure a job he’s a Luddite and terrorist.

klik99 3y ago

I heard Brian Merchant on 99% Invisible and this take is slight historical revisionism, but I'm ok with that. It's revisionist because he's conflating the earlier movement when workers tried to negotiate with factory owners and organize with the Luddite movement. True - the failure of the first movement led to Ludditism out of desperation, but the groups are separate. Luddite literally is named after Ned Ludd smashing machinery, so it cannot be the name of the movement that was around organizing and negotiation because they only turned to smashing when organizing was made illegal. Basically workers tried to negotiate, were stymied, and a bunch of frustrated people started smashing machines, which caused a positive reaction from people so it started spreading and others started smashing stuff too. When I first heard of Ludditism it was with more nuance that it's used today - to be a Luddite was to rage against technology with the art of a bull in a china shop. It wasn't a blanket term against "anti-progress" like it is now, but rather a dumb approach to dealing with change. Of course now it is used just to shut down people who don't like technology, so that's why I'm ok with some amount of revisionism, since the way it's being used currently is revisionist itself. The only danger in conflating these legit concerns about automation with a violent movement is this implication that violence is the only way to bridge this gap, and I can see a strong argument that is was true back in those days, due to the Crown literally making any organizing and collective negotiation illegal, I strongly don't believe it's true today. I believe a violent reaction today would cause more harm to workers rights than help.

barrysteve 3y ago
Can I slighty revise your comment and take out the bit where it says you're okay with revisionism? Talk about a slippery slope...
- klik99 3y ago
  I get it - I'm against revisionism in theory but practically there's a strong argument that all history is revisionist. I am conflicted, but I'm going to argue the "ok with revisionism" side of things - "Ok" being the weakest pro word, like I'd rate this 6 out of 9 if 1 was "totally against", 5 was "totally neutral" and 9 was "totally for". Part of us building the future is interpreting the past in a way that applies to our current world. For example - our modern western world was built on reinterpreting Romans and Greeks and idealizing their use of democracy. We had to throw away a lot of awful things they did to focus on just the good stuff. And even that period of history is being debated about how to interpret it in an attempt to understand who we are now - was it slave owning colonists who only prospered due to others labour or was it enlightened open thinkers who brought prosperity to the world, or was it a mix of those things or something else entirely. Revising the Luddite movement to include the earlier peaceful methods with the goal of saying healthy skepticism about technology is IMO a good thing - the Luddite movement specifically is tightly linked to the earlier movement so it's not a stretch to revise things it to include that whole chain of events. But I'd be lying if I wasn't annoyed when he said things that weren't technically correct during the 99% invisible interview. But it's also revisionist to use Luddite as bludgeon, so if people are going to remove any subtlety from a word, I'd rather it was revised in an helpful way.

avgcorrection 3y ago

> Brian Merchant’s new book, “Blood in the Machine,” argues that Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the rights of workers in the face of automation. And this isn't common knowledge?

klik99 3y ago
for people outside of tech, apparently not. I get it - all they know is this thing they've been called many times and just see it's a pejorative. It's a little grating when he says it was misused intentionally by tech overlords to paint concerned people as anti-progress (he says this in the 99% interview), but I get where he's coming from - some people use just as an insult to throw around, whether or not they know the source.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Judging by half the derogatory comments here, it's not something widely known within tech either. The most annoying thing about this place is that half the people here think they're immune to Dunning-Kruger and Gell-Man based on the hobby/profession they happen to have.

hnax 3y ago

Man's greatest advantage over (Generative) AI is his creativity, originality, ingenuity, spirituality and commonsense. Our defeat is sealed once we become more impressed with statistically produces results (including the obvious hallucinations and subtle lies by mission and omission), rather than trusting our God given qualities. We are and should not try stopping technology: we just have to sublime our human qualities and keep proving technologies' limitations (many of which are so obvious as requiring only some commonsense).

JSavageOne 3y ago

So essentially the modern framing of the luddite movement is a giant strawman argument mischaracterizing labor as being against technology when in reality they were just trying to figure out how to survive in a world where their work and livelihoods were made redundant practically overnight. The same will happen to modern wage labor due to AI. Automation will not be a sudden an obvious moment (eg. Google deciding to lay off every software engineer), rather it will be a slow hemorrhaging of the working class where vast swaths of workers will be laid off, and unable to find work of similar pay and stability ever again. The job market will continue to get exponentially more and more competitive, and the illusion of stability will collapse. This same trend has already been playing out over the last few decades, but the pace at which it's playing out is now accelerating exponentially. Because jobs will still exist, the status quo "just re-train them" optimists will remain ignorant and in denial, clinging to old models of the past. They'll say ridiculous things like "we can re-train the bus drivers by teaching them how to code", or "just teach illustrators how to prompt". Of course advancing technology should be a good thing, and with the modern technology we have now we already could afford a society of leisure and abundance. But our current capitalist system drains most people of the time/energy for big picture thinking (unrelated to making a buck), and our representative democracy (compared to direct or delegative democracy) further discourages political participation from regular people who aren't wealthy enough to have the abundance of leisure and financial security required to think about anything other than money. The result is that governments only serve the interests of the wealthy, while providing only an illusion of representing the masses. The rigidity and inflexibility of government systems means that nothing will change short of a revolution. The easiest and simplest policy change that can be made to alleviate job loss + destitution from AI and to reframe AI automation from a game with winners + losers to a game where everyone wins is to implement a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Think we can't afford a UBI? Fine. Start small, and peg it to the revenues of something specific like a Land Value Tax (Henry George's "citizen's dividend"). Watch society not collapse and everyone be happier (eg. like when COVID forced employers to allow more remote work) as society collectively moves up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The increasing abundance of leisure will start the flywheel towards increasing political participation and representation of the people, systemic political reform towards delegative democracy (liquid democracy), and the next evolution of the human species in the "AI Age". Until then, the only way to safeguard yourself from the AI automation wave is to achieve financial independence and to fully embrace AI, since workers who know how to leverage the latest AI tools will displace those who don't.