The Luddites and AI…
I’ve written before about the Luddites and what their story tells us about AI’s impact on work. A recent article from The Brookings Institution helps extend this thinking in some useful ways.
My earlier post made the case that the Luddites weren’t anti-technology but instead were anti-exploitation. Between 1811 and 1816, skilled textile workers organized against machinery not because they feared progress, but because they understood how factory owners were deploying these machines to concentrate power and degrade skilled work. As Brian Merchant writes in “Blood in the Machine,” it was “an uprising not against progress but against the first tech titans.”
The Brookings article rightly points out that AI deployment is concentrating wealth with tech companies, while externalizing costs: environmental damage, exploitative labor conditions for content moderators, erosion of the information commons. Etc.
The Brookings piece suggests a few things:
Journalists should stop reporting from inside the hype machine; academics need to examine systems, not just sectors; policymakers must regulate deployment, not just development; educators shouldn’t hand the mind to the machine.
Technological change isn’t inevitable. It’s shaped by specific interests and deployment choices. I still believe the machines aren’t coming for our jobs. A small group of highly influential people with power are choosing to deploy machines in particular ways and accruing immense wealth, often without much thought for those affected.
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We should all be Luddites
