Rethinking the Luddites

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-luddites-in-the-age-of-ai

by Hooke • 3 years ago

238 536 3 years ago

pininja• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

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

w_for_wumbo• 3 years 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_• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

username135• 3 years ago

That's essentially capitalism.

Profit > everything else

mulmen• 3 years ago

This is a nice sentiment but labor doesn’t create value in a world of robots. We need a radically different system of wealth allocation.

pydry• 3 years ago

1) We need a radically different one now - one that shifts the burden *off" labor and back on to asset owners - especially land owners (there is literally only an economic upside to taxing them more).

2) somebody still has to fix those robots.

3) if control over the economy were wrested from oligarchs and were put under democratic control, the economy wouldnt be geared towards frittering away billions on trying to deskill, dehumanize and eliminate labor.

fatherzine4• 3 years ago

Or, we need a system in which labor intrinsically creates the lion share of value.

gunapologist99• 3 years ago

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.

Equal pay for robots!!

zlg_codes17• 3 years ago

Given what the "top" of society looks like currently, the Luddites were correct to be skeptical of technology, and accusations of "Luddite" at the slightest hint of not being 100% on board with the latest fad technology make this discussion seem in bad faith. Most techies I know do not have a skeptical eye for technology, even though IMO they should. This shit is being used to spy on and manipulate us with the data they gather. At what point is it okay to say "no"? My view of the culture says techies never say no to new shiny.

We need a new era of carefulness in computing, both as programmers and as users. We need to demand better accountability. As long as the leaders we have now are still there tomorrow, I'm afraid this goal will never happen. You need a nation who cares more about its people than its GDP to achieve that, and I posit no nation on Earth has that level of care for its people.

kevinventullo• 3 years ago

My view of the culture says techies never say no to new shiny

The only people I know who remotely care about things like data privacy and GDPR are techies. I personally will never install a “smart home” device.

_aavaa_3• 3 years ago

luddites were not skeptical of technology, or even against it. They were against the way in which factory owners used technology to illegally displace them (as workers) and to falsely advertise the resulting textiles (selling low quality goods while claiming they were of higher quality) in order to undercut them and put them out of business.

Aerroon7• 3 years ago

Given what the "top" of society looks like currently, the Luddites were correct to be skeptical of technology

I much prefer modern society over what they had. Commonly available running water, electricity, heating, insulation, the internet are some pretty nice things.

You need a nation who cares more about its people than its GDP to achieve that, and I posit no nation on Earth has that level of care for its people.

And it will come at the expense of future generations. All the advancements of yesterday are what make our modern comforts possible. If we stop that in some redistribution fantasy then tomorrow will not be an improvement over today.

rossriley• 3 years ago

People bring the value that they generate for an economy. Once they can be replaced with AI/Robots then that labour can be reallocated further up the value chain which in turn makes our economies and culture richer and more productive.

Imagine if we were all working 18 hour subsistence farming jobs now just to survive, it's ridiculous to argue that eschewing automation for anything is detrimental, it only serves to enhance society and make it more productive.

peteradio• 3 years ago

Bit of a rosy picture though. People aren't reallocated, instead they are fed opioids/various other drugs to death. There are very much winners and losers.

Syonyk• 3 years ago

Imagine if we were all working 18 hour subsistence farming jobs now just to survive...

Then you definitely shouldn't look at actual reports of time spent, leisure time, etc, in those eras.

Because that's nothing at all what life was in the eras you're thinking of.

How much of our modern time - work hours - do we spend to maintain the cars we take to work, and the large houses we were convinced to buy "as an investment," etc? Or just our personal tech stacks that always somehow seem to need replacement?

TA23091417• 3 years ago

Subsistence farming would not take 18hr days if peasants were not required to spend the first 12hrs farming cash crops for the landlord, as the price for allowing them to farm actual food on his second rate plots.

epolanski4• 3 years ago

People bring the value that they generate for an economy.

Nurses, teachers? Those bring insane value but get little recognition, in all senses, for that.

bamboozled4• 3 years ago

Have you ever seen with your own eyes a farmer working 18 hours a day ?

My theory is the 18 hour subsistence farmer story is a myth we tell ourselves that the world we’ve created is better, no questions asked.

I live in a part of the world where people do a surprising amount of farming by hand. Very little machines and almost no fertiliser is used. No one, absolutely no one is working 18 hours. Mostly they have busy springs, relaxing summers and festivals for autumn harvest. Most farmers are in their 70s so they’re not looking to work hard either.

I’m sure subsistence farmers existed, but they likely worked hard because they weren’t educated well. I bet there have always been some higher quality farming going on.

I’ve also stayed with a remote Aboriginal tribe in Australia. I have to be honest they had very relaxed lifestyles.

We bag out the last to make ourselves feel better about the future we’re creating. We’re insecure.

heavyset_go9• 3 years ago

Imagine if we were all working 18 hour subsistence farming jobs now just to survive

Pre-industrial workers actually worked less than people who have 40 hour work weeks do[1].

[1] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

thuuuomas• 3 years ago

that labour can be reallocated further up the value chain

Not in America - upskilling workers is too expensive.

Displaced workers are gonna break rocks in debtor’s prisons & the median voter already thinks they deserve it.

AI will bring mass downward mobility.

JohnFen5• 3 years ago

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.

Companies already send that clear message even without AI. That's why there's fear here: we expect companies to behave as they always have, and that is with a level of contempt for human workers.

fiftyfifty2• 3 years ago

What about as consumers then? Without workers who's going to buy anything? We have some serious logistics to figure out if we automate the majority of jobs away, and yet somehow all these companies are expecting people to still be able to buy their products.

jjoonathan• 3 years ago

Labor and Capital

You don't have to read between the lines, you can simply read the lines.

nico4• 3 years ago

Companies already send that clear message even without AI.

Companies are people. You are saying people running those companies are doing that to other people

TerrifiedMouse5• 3 years ago

They have a contempt for the cost of human workers and, frankly, just cost in general.

atleastoptimal• 3 years ago

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.

The thing is we can't help but compare people on the value that they bring. We can't go on about human value being tied to our creativity, emotional sensitivity, or any skill because once AI can do that, that value goes out the window for humans. Humans have to be valuable for no other reason than the fact that they are human, even if they technically are a burden. This is the only mentality that will keep humans safe in the AI apocalypse.

__MatrixMan__2• 3 years ago

Perhaps it's time to stop using untyped value as a concept entirely.

It has always been unclear--in cases where people's objectives differ--just whose values are used determine what counts as "value".

It's a simplification that served us well when the common threat was famine or disease or war, but those threats weigh less on us these days. We're more concerned with mistreatment from each other, so we probably need something that answers "whose values?" instead so that we can be reminded to check if that person's agenda is actually worth persuing.

Such a shift might help interrupt dangerous optimizations such as optimizing for GDP at the expense of biosphere stability.

deevolution2• 3 years ago

I think the compensation comes in the form of lower prices, greater availability of the products, a higher standard of living and newly gained freedom for the worker. They can do something else now. The compensation maybe isn't as explicit or obvious as receiving an "automation dividend" check every month. That's what securities are for!

ethanbond2• 3 years ago

Is this a billboard for Capital in the whole Capital vs Labor debate?

“Laborers fret not, you’ve been liberated from your job actually, and I sure hope you bought securities!”

danuker2• 3 years ago

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.

I see many problems with this statement:

- Is a new robot-only company fairer than firing humans at an old company?

- Should we as a society forego the benefits of automation, because it makes some people unemployed?

- Should there be a robot tax? What is a robot? Is my calculator a robot that keeps an arithmeticist out of a job?

- Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit?

In my view, we should automate as much as we can, because we spend less valuable human time on what is achievable by machine. However, as more and more people fall behind as technology progresses, it might pose a problem, so I think we should institute basic income.

I wouldn't bother with regulating the minutia, just tax Laffer-optimally and give out benefits so as not to create perverse incentives.

But I am keen to know someone's thoughts to the contrary.

NoahKAndrews• 3 years ago

I generally agree with you, and I suspect the person you're replying to might as well. The problem they had was with replacing people without compensating them, but you're proposing basic income, which takes care of the compensation part.

sublinear2• 3 years ago

However, as more and more people fall behind as technology progresses, it might pose a problem, so I think we should institute basic income.

Basic income is the most counterproductive idea possible. We should have spent more on education over 100 years ago.

dogman144• 3 years ago

Yes, this would be the clear message OP is talking about haha.

It’s a time to be pro-human, across many topics.

bigstrat2003• 3 years ago

Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit?

Yes! Very much yes! Adam Smith himself noted that a capitalist enterprise, if not run according to good values (which to him meant Christian values, but it need not be that for everyone), would be a horrible thing. That hasn't really changed since. A business needs to have some values behind it other than pure profit-seeking, or else it becomes a serious ill for society.

talent_deprived• 3 years ago

Should we as a society forego the benefits of automation, because it makes some people unemployed?

Yes. AI generates sameness on a good day, and comical gibberish on a bad day, that will never change because, AI isn't human.

Sameness will drive customers to look for human made stuff, gibberish will drive them away.

heavyset_go9• 3 years ago

- Should we as a society forego the benefits of automation, because it makes some people unemployed?

We as society aren't the beneficiaries of automation, those profits go to private owners. Given that price points exist, the benefits of lowering costs of production are captured by increasing profit margins.

After those profits are captured, we as society have to shoulder the burden of caring for potentially thousands, or more, people who are put out of work, and their families.

bfung• 3 years ago

Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit?

Should an AI created to make paper clips consider other values than making paper clips?

https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/squiggle-maximizer-formerly-pa...

Diving all the way down ad absurdum: What's the point of maximizing profit if there are no humans to utilize those profits?

hiAndrewQuinn• 3 years ago

Should we as a society forego the benefits of automation, because it makes some people unemployed?

False dichotomy + poorly statistically worded.

The proper question is always "Would society be better off at the margin with more automation". The answer someday may well be "No, because many people are already unemployed, and this will exacerbate that even further", but there's no reason to add that clause to the question.

yMEyUyNE1• 3 years ago

Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit?

Enterprise is created to provide a beneficial service to the society/humanity/world. Profit is a means to sustain the people, who are working in the enterprise, and subsequently the enterprise. The problem starts when some smartass in power becomes greedy and turns an enterprise for service to people into an enterprise ONLY for profit. If you only want to make money, work in a govt mint.

__loam7• 3 years ago

The development of ML to automate this stuff is especially perverse because ML can't function without the prior value created by people like artists and writers.

Aerroon7• 3 years ago

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.

This just sounds like rent-seeking. People should get paid, because they once upon a time had a job. Now machines do the job better and for cheaper, therefore you deserve to be paid for it?

How about the compensation is the improved products or better prices for all of society?

SoftTalker5• 3 years ago

How much should a person get paid?

pixl9710• 3 years ago

Ok, then what should they get paid for?

Lets imagine your future world.

Manual labor, right? No, that's done by robots.

Arts and music... well, no. Some generative LLM hooked up to the data feeds of all human emotions is cranking more art/music per day then all 10 billion people on the planet can ever consume.

Sex, the oldest profession. Na, Cherry (and Ken) 2000 came out a decade ago and has met our more primal needs since then.

So, now what do you do with all these masses have have no purpose. Oh, you don't care because you're going to be one of the enlightened few that somehow makes it out of the rat trap? Seems unlikely.

Stop demanding a future dystopia.

stan3223• 3 years ago

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.

Wasn't this message sent in the 80s and 90s when it was somehow acceptable to offshore manufacturing for increased bottom line devastating economies and people of small/mid size cities.

kaashif3• 3 years ago

At the same time, China booming has brought hundreds of millions out of crushing poverty. There are obviously positives and negatives, we shouldn't focus on one side.

eru7• 3 years ago

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.

Huh, what? When you get a glass of fresh water from your tap, do you send a dollar to the displaced water carriers of yesteryear?

android521• 3 years ago

there are already plenty of evidence to suggest that we, collectively, don't treat our fellow humans well. There are tens of millions of people who are on survival mode and most of people living in developed countries simply don't care much , including you and me. You absolutely cannot rely on humans to treat each other well. In the AI age, it will mostly benefit those who have capital to employ an army of AIs. It is hard to believe our politicians will do anything drastic but only drastic changes will matter (like universal income or very high tax for wealthy people who no long rely on labors). Dark times ahead.

lynx23• 3 years ago

Ahh, entitlement. I find it somewhat confusing that people seem to treat the AI and robot era as if it were anything new. Workers are being replaced by machines since, what, 50 to 100 years? It is happening in stages, but... I just watched a old TV-series (Büro Büro[1]) from the 80s, and guess what, replacing human workforce with computers was already a topic back then. AI is just the new type of robot, but we have been doing this since decades. It is a bit like with climate change. We are aware that our way of life is not sustainable since roughly 40 to 50 years. In both cases, young people today behave like these problems are new. They aren't. Going back to the job market, automation is a result of technological advancements. Doomsayers like to point out it is taking work away from humans, while optimists focus on a future where nobody has to do anything while still getting money for nothing... Both sides are likely wrong. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCro,_B%C3%BCro

surfingdino2• 3 years ago

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.

Compensation doesn't fix the problem. As more and more jobs get replaced with AI or robots, the number of ways of earning a living shrinks and people have no money to buy the products and services offered by the AI-poweered industrial complex. It's a problem that the billionaire gods don't want to see. The politicians don't have a clue how to address it either.

ithkuil• 3 years ago

Well, billionaires may stop being billionaires when nobody can consume their product/services because they can't afford them

luminouslow• 3 years ago

the number of ways of earning a living shrinks

Is this true? it seems there are new ways cropping up all the time

zirgs4• 3 years ago

Did anyone care about welders who got replaced, because robots are much better at welding car frames together?

Only now when "prestigious" white collar positions are being threatened people are starting to freak out.

val314159• 3 years ago

check out 80's movies. The dying steel town was a trope.

kwhitefoot• 3 years 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.

NoThankYouTho2• 3 years 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_2• 3 years 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).

hef198988• 3 years 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.

HDThoreaun3• 3 years 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."

generic92034• 3 years ago

The hypocrisy in this popular perception is, that this would be anything but completely normal human behavior. Does anyone believe C level executives would replace themselves by (advanced) AIs, just because is would make sense economically?

jacquesm• 3 years ago

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

ImHereToVote7• 3 years ago

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

lolinder7• 3 years 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.

czl4• 3 years 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?

PaulDavisThe1st6• 3 years ago

Should you have the right to press for changes that impose a cost on others?

HDThoreaun3• 3 years ago

You certainly have the right to try.

zlg_codes17• 3 years ago

How were the Luddites harming others by preserving their way of life?

Also, costs? We're caring about money in a discussion about technology and culture? By that measure, the only cultures we should have around are the ones that cost the least.

watwut• 3 years ago

Preserving way of life here means "not starving and my kids have stuff to eat"

zlg_codes17• 3 years ago

There are many things twisted like this in our living memory and it irritates the hell out of me. How do we deal with it aside from endlessly correcting people? Indeed, Luddites weren't against technology.

The McDonald's hot coffee lady case wasn't frivolous.

"The customer is always right..."? Yeah, "... in matters of taste." It means you don't sell a customer who wants a green car a red one.

The "welfare queen" story wasn't about a woman who was lazy and collecting benefits, she just fit a profile that matched peoples' prejudice. It's difficult to stay on the government dole and there's a lot of conditions for receiving it. Defrauding them can disqualify you from further benefits or land you in the slammer. People aren't out there living the high life off of SS.

Sorry if it seems scattershot, I'm just describing other things that get twisted far away from their original circumstance, usually just to enable anti social behavior, like calling someone who takes a careful approach to technology a Luddite.

arp242• 3 years ago

For better or worse, in modern parlance "luddite" is the same as "vandal" or "barbarian": actual Vandals weren't really vandalistic, and Barbarians weren't all that barbaric.

If the term wasn't "luddite", "vandal", or "barbarian" then it would be something else to describe the same thing. That is: these terms aren't really a source of any sentiment, and merely used to describe it.

This is different from e.g. the McDonald's coffee lady, where people draw real conclusions about modern society from the case (usually with very limited knowledge of the facts) and is the source of a sentiment.

adwn2• 3 years ago

The McDonald's hot coffee lady case wasn't frivolous.

No, this isn't "twisted in our living memory". The people who think that the lawsuit is frivolous haven't forgotten that the coffee was hotter than other fast-food coffee, or rather, it has no bearing on their assessment.

Coffee is a hot beverage, and it's in your personal responsibility not to put a flimsy cup containing a hot beverage between your legs, especially not while sitting in a car. It's completely irrelevant whether the coffee was 85°C, 75°C, or 65°C, or whether there's a large warning label on the side of the cup – as an adult you can be expected to exert common sense, and if you don't, then McDonald's shouldn't be held liable for your clumsiness.

fiftyfifty2• 3 years ago

The real lesson we should be taking from the Luddites is while they did establish a precedent for fighting for worker's rights, they failed in any meaningful way to reverse the march of technology. In fact throughout history we have never managed to put the technology genie back in the bottle, probably going back to the first tools and weapons that were ever created. So we had better figure out real quick how we are going to live with AI, because there is no going back now.

quickthrower22• 3 years ago

Being a Luddite and a Dunce (John Duns Scotus) is not a bad thing.

pixl9710• 3 years ago

Pretty much every take posted under your thread here about luddites is a terrible one.

People in this thread don't seem to understand what the more archaic form of "preserve their way of life" actually means.

It means not starving to death. Back then there was no social safety net. Once your trade was not needed back then you were likely kicked to the street. There was not retraining to learn some new trade.

This is something in the times of "Learn 2 code", or "Go be a plumber" that we hear tossed about so casually. When you cause mass unemployment in a trade, especially very rapidly, you can destabilize society, you can induce crime, and even if you're not directly affected by the trade, you can be indirectly affected by the instability of the changing employment market.

lolinder7• 3 years ago

Fully agreed. And everything that you say in that last paragraph is just as true today as it was then, at least in the US. We do not have a good strategy in place for taking care of all of these displaced people, and society in general will suffer for it.

heavyset_go9• 3 years ago

Once your trade was not needed back then you were likely kicked to the street

This is precisely what happened to Luddites and their families, at least the ones who weren't executed or exiled by the state.

cynicalsecurity• 3 years 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.

lewhoo4• 3 years ago

This is true but the "prophecy" is this is unavoidable due to rapid development and no ceiling in sight.

claudiulodro• 3 years 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.

2muchcoffeeman2• 3 years 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_codes17• 3 years 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.

zlg_codes17• 3 years ago

Ever boiled a frog?

daniel_reetz• 3 years ago

Respectfully, AI is a core issue in the strikes in Hollywood right now, and a whole industry has been out of work for months now.

paxys3• 3 years ago

AI is very far from a "core issue" in those strikes, but merely something that is being thrown around as a bargaining chip (the actual issue is the streaming business and how it affects the entertainment economy). Not a single writer or actor to date has lost their job because of or been replaced by AI.

mplewis2• 3 years ago

Are you not? Over 50% of people in the USA are living paycheck to paycheck with no emergency fund. Perhaps look a little harder.

alexb_2• 3 years 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.

lolinder7• 3 years 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.

Gigachad3• 3 years 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.

lewhoo4• 3 years 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.

randomcarbloke2• 3 years ago

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

fredoliveira• 3 years ago

Care to expand?

randomcarbloke2• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

abakker3• 3 years 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.

lewhoo4• 3 years 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 ?

lolinder7• 3 years ago

When a dollar store moves into an area, it provides most products for cheaper than an independent grocer possibly can, inevitably putting the local grocer out of business. It's sad for the grocer, but surely it's for the benefit of the community as a whole, right? Everything is cheaper! Except that the dollar store doesn't sell produce, and it just put the store that did out of business.

I see a similar trend with automation: it can do most of the job far cheaper than the specialist can, so short-term rationality says we should embrace it completely. But then the specialist goes away, and we don't have access to them anymore for the things that automation is bad at.

When you call in to customer support you can't talk to a human, because they replaced them with chat bots. When you need a good website designer because Wix won't cut it, they're out of your price range because the only ones left are working for large companies. When you want a new book, you can't find one written by a human, not because the robots have gotten as good as a good author, but because they've gotten good enough to spam the marketplaces so thoroughly that writing a good book isn't profitable anymore.

robbomacrae• 3 years ago

This is a really good argument. One that I haven't heard before. Is there a name for it? It seems to cover some of the backward steps we take when meandering (hopefully) forwards that I for one hadn't considered.

I suspect it's not worth pausing anything over due to the inevitable if we won't they will excuse and also because its part of the re-invention of business that goes with new technology. The things you want that have gone are now an opportunity for someone else to figure out. If I was an entrepreneur keeping my ear to the ground I'd weigh up starting a boutique produce delivery services, a human agency dedicated to dealing with companies on your behalf, a wix plugin market, a book review site etc.

creer10• 3 years ago

I don't think that reasonning is correct. There is nothing inevitable about the dollar store putting the grocer out of business. The grocer doesn't have to insist and try to sell the same things the dollar store does. There are many other things that need retailing, and there are many other services that need providing. For example everywhere I look, farmers markets are doing great - while surrounded by megamarts. For another example, the alleged king of megamarts is doing a truly shitty job and giving a free ride to Amazon. It's not that Amazon or Target are winning but that it was Walmart's opportunity to not win and they are valiantly going at giving everyone else a chance. The grocer can absolutely "not even try" but that doesn't prove a whole lot. Granted that once that grocer has let both the dollar store and the online marketplaces take over, well now they have to get truly creative and adapt to two generation steps at once. And then again, surrounded by megamarts and free advice web sites, stores dedicated to wine with advice, or dedicated to cheese are all over Europe. Their job is retail and they found a need and a customer base that neither the megamarts nor amazon could manage.

You mention the web designer and that's again a good example - but not supporting the direction you want, I think. Web design is a field that's easy to enter (because does not require tens of years of experience or expensive in house server farms or expensive tools or license or large corporate team). It's not obvious for a busy small business to find a not-sold-out but good web designer but only because of near full employment. Probably that web designer should be more and more aware and agile using lower level tools (including generative AI and lower wage countries), but there is no reason supply and demand can't still meet each other in web design. Even in the age of Wix and such. They are different kinds of offerings which do compete with each other so that the boundary fluctuates but do not replace each other. Wix only displaces web designers that only do what Wix does. And even then only marginally so: a web designer can use Wix - just better than the customer - and have a service to sell.

zlg_codes17• 3 years ago

This is a great perspective because, if humans acted rationally and ethically, it would be reality.

The problem I have with tools like that is the technical quality of the solution (which Wix seemed somewhat reasonable in its output when I briefly looked around at Wix sites) and the social effects. Putting together a Wix site and buying or downloading/installing a theme does not make you a Web developer.

You're still getting to the end goal of a site, but without the knowledge of how it works and, should it break, how to fix it, it's more of an appliance to you than an environment to express yourself. (using royal you, not you personally)

It's strange to me that people want to be able to "do what the nerds can", but don't want to put any of the effort forth. I would love to be a great drummer or saxophonist, but I recognize it would take years of effort and practice to reach that point. I could compose tracks using synthesized instruments, and that's its own music skill I guess, but it's definitely not the same as playing the instrument.

Which jobs are you referring to that were lost? The dot-com era? As far as I understand, a lot of web design firms still exist, and tons more freelancers make cash through selling custom themes for clients or packaged themes on Wordpress, small client-oriented web apps, etc. And, given that much of the market is on Web tech still, a lot of the skills from 20 years ago translate pretty well and can now be used to make software within the browser. In my own efforts to learn how to make webapps, I've only really had to learn flexbox and grid. Most of my old knowledge has carried over, with some slight modernization tweaks as necessary. It's nice to never need to float a div ever again, haha.

Having good tools that create good work is a goal I think most of us can get behind. The challenge lies in building the tools and promoting healthy culture.

nemo44x10• 3 years ago

It's strange to me that people want to be able to "do what the nerds can", but don't want to put any of the effort forth.

People, generally speaking, want outcomes. They don’t care how it’s done or what is used to get there. No one goes to the hardware store to buy a drill. They go there to buy holes.

creer10• 3 years ago

The music example is another good one: you can muddle through doing your own with free tools. Or if you want to get stuff done, you can hire session musicians. Does that mean there is a smaller market for session musicians? Yes. Does it mean the session musician job is now different? Yes. For one thing probably they can't be on autopilot. But there is still going to be a demand. Could it be that it's harder to make a living as a session musician. Probably so. Especially so during the period when there are too many legacy session musicians and already the future's fewer jobs - during that time offer exceeds demand and prices plunge.

The historical luddite example comes out - it seems - because the mechanization benefit is so massive to the owners that they convert very quickly. And an entire region relied on one industry. Little chance or time for the workers to convert even if they saw it coming, and they didn't.

Gigachad3• 3 years ago

Reality is that it didn't cost any jobs. Everyone just moved up to making things more complex than what Wix can do. I don't feel my life is any worse off having moved from building static marketing pages to complex web apps.

nemo44x10• 3 years ago

Exactly this. As certain types of jobs go away it frees us to do new ones. When we had an agrarian society there weren’t many massage parlors around even though they probably could have used them.

Additionally as programming languages and toolkits have become higher level and more accessible there has been more demand for programmers.

robbintt• 3 years ago

It definitely reduced the amount and complexity of work there is to do. So, in a static market, it reduced the number of workers. It's hard to see in tech which is an expanding market.

notpachet2• 3 years ago

So that's why we have SPA's for things that should be simple HTML sites!

gumballindie• 3 years ago

were all very happy to use wix even though it cost the jobs of legions of developers.

What?

tegmark• 3 years ago

then you are completely blind. dont see the difference between the printing press and total human obsolescence as well as the insane ramifications of technology explosion that comes with agi

educaysean• 3 years ago

Wow. Computers never should've been invented! Such ramifications of technology explosion that comes with personalized computing

quickthrower22• 3 years ago

You make a good point. However I think Wix's competitor was not developers. It's competitor was businesses just going without a website.

meheleventyone2• 3 years ago

I actually think this is where automation and tools are most useful in some respects. Instead of displacing workers they bring an ability into the range of the average person. I’m not familiar with Wix specifically but I didn’t see that there was this huge industry of people making websites for individuals. Mostly because individuals can’t afford it! A tool brings it within the budgets of individuals and you get an explosion of websites. MySpace was very similar. 3D printing is another technology that has largely let previously hard and expensive manufacturing to be done by the individual.

It’s be callous to disregard that this probably also displaces some people from jobs but personally I think the difference of scale is important. In particular what scale can society and the economy actually absorb. I think there are good arguments that there are social and economic issues already starkly apparent that have been caused by similar shocks. Extrapolating from those experiences the likely impact of large scale AI shocks right now seems to be larger inequality and more social and economic issues than less.

Animats• 3 years 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.

PaulDavisThe1st6• 3 years 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!"

jschveibinz2• 3 years ago

“They” is “we.”

nojvek• 3 years 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.

donatj• 3 years ago

And we're all better for it. We've got way better jobs than making stockings.

janalsncm• 3 years 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_codes17• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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."

adasdasdas2• 3 years 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_go9• 3 years 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.

adasdasdas2• 3 years 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.

Aunche3• 3 years 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.

HDThoreaun3• 3 years 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.

hexage18142• 3 years 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.

hexage18142• 3 years ago

They didn't care for the welfare of workers in general so much as they were looking out for themselves

This! It's the same deal with white collar workers complaining about AI just now, while ignoring previous automation, when it benefited them.

lolinder7• 3 years ago

Without the new factory jobs, even more people would be stuck as serfs like they were in China or Russia at the time.

Both the Luddites and the enclosure of common land as discussed in history books both were in the context of the UK, which had a very different system that was not at all comparable to serfdom. To the extent that it is true the UK cities were better than the UK countryside, it's not because the people moving there were already an abused underclass of near-slaves like you imply, and the enclosure of common land would absolutely have had an impact on the ability of the free farmers to get by.

cm20125• 3 years ago

Yes, and factories are a good thing for every other country as well. Why have 1b Chinese moved from rural farm life to city factory life? Because rural farm life is unimaginably shitty in pretty much every way.

raincole5• 3 years ago

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.

Unions don't fight for the welfare of workers in general. They fight for their members and their members only.

So thank you for your strong anti-union speech, I guess.

TotalCrackpot4• 3 years ago

Unions like IWW fight for all workers, cause they want to end whole wage work.

Aunche3• 3 years ago

I also don't agree with the characterization of unions as heroic for the same reason, but at least, they don't typically intentionally destroy factories.

mplewis2• 3 years ago

The Luddites weren't wrong.

UtopiaPunk• 3 years 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-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• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/Bqglw

labrador2• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

labrador2• 3 years 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?

paxys3• 3 years 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.

pixl9710• 3 years 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?

bigpeopleareold2• 3 years ago

I presume that large swaths of the population don't have hobbies and need others to tell them what to do. There is a reason why idle hands are admonished (like in a religious context: Proverbs 16:27: "Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece")

Would we still be in terrible conflict with hate and prejudice prevalent?

Yes, definitely yes. We don't stop being human when we are freed from labour.

mullingitover2• 3 years 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_Communi...

sunday_serif• 3 years 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.

shanusmagnus4• 3 years 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.

failuser3• 3 years ago

For how long? The authoritarians have deeper pockets than ever and democrats (lower case d) are struggling.

jampekka3• 3 years 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.

myth_drannon• 3 years ago

How do we know we are not in feudal system right now? Propaganda machine is telling us we are in a democracy, but all I see is oligarchy controlling the system.

tap-snap-or-nap• 3 years ago

"Masses controlling the ballot box" is far more complicated than most people understand.

chromoblob6• 3 years ago

Please elaborate.

paxys3• 3 years 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.

harerazer• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

rainonmoon• 3 years ago

Did "these same people"? I can think of lots of people who orbit and are sympathetic to Brian Merchant's recent work who have been approaching tech via a labour rights lens since the start of their careers. The visibility may be new, but that says more about who's paying attention (and who wasn't previously) than who's doing the work.

TerrifiedMouse5• 3 years ago

Well the exact same argument applies now.

Not exactly. Old school automations are pretty limited. You can’t automate everything so there will always be work for humans.

Automation is what allows our quality of life today so I wouldn’t knock it.

AI though could potentially eliminate all jobs. How the heck is society going to function after that I have no idea.

In its current state it has the potential to eliminate “low end” beginner jobs. That’s problematic because if you don’t have juniors professionals today … you won’t have seniors in the future. Now you could argue that AI would develop to takeover senior jobs too but that’s not a sure thing. It would be really bad if you bet the farm on AI continuing to progress at a certain pace and it didn’t happen - we could even get another AI Winter as all the low hanging fruit from the advancement of tech the last few decades are picked clean.

raincole5• 3 years ago

It's telling that this anti-automation and anti-AI movement is finally reaching its crescendo

Is it? I just fail to see how it "reaching its crescendo". Luddites DID destroy machines. Where are the anti-AI people buring data centers down?

If anything I will say there is barely any anti-AI movement happening around the world right now.

There are millions of vegan people choose to not eat meat as their lifestyles. Do you see people choose not to use AI product as their lifestyle? About zero? This is how small so-called anti-AI movement (if exist) is.

SamoyedFurFluff• 3 years ago

Tv and Hollywood writers in one of the most culturally exported countries in the world striked for several months with specific anti AI demands, which were then capitulated to today.

eru7• 3 years ago

These same people writing books about the evils of AI sat back over the last few decades as [...]

What makes you think so? People in eg their 20s or even 40s writing books today, haven't been around long enough to do much of anything 50 years ago.

And hand-writing about automation stealing jobs does have a long and storied history.

andersrs• 3 years ago

sat back

I'd say it's more than sitting back. Complaining about the loss of manufacturing jobs or immigrants competing for jobs and housing is seen to be poor peoples' game. The middle class want to be (seen to be) wealthy and educated so they'll signal that these trends are nothing to worry about because it's only an issue for the plebs and they're definitely not a pleb with this opinion.

Every technology has it's equal and opposite force.

Smart phones result in dumber people with lower attention spans. Medicine has taken away most evolutionary selection pressure. Modern agriculture paired with car culture means a lot of us are unfit and overweight. Social media makes people less socially connected and promotes unrealistic beauty standards.

zone4112• 3 years 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.

ImHereToVote7• 3 years 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.

zone4112• 3 years ago

Athletes might be an example. But yes, once robotics advances, there won't be that many left.

cm20125• 3 years 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.

pixl9710• 3 years 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.

cm20125• 3 years 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.

raincole5• 3 years 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.

fnord1232• 3 years 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_...

There are also many law suits against AI works:

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• 3 years 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

raincole5• 3 years 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

supertimor7• 3 years 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.

ytoawwhra922• 3 years ago

From my pov, they are using the violence of the legal system to stop/slow AI.

Luddites used extra-legal methods to try to accomplish their goals, so I don't think the comparison really works.

justanotherjoe• 3 years 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.

jampekka3• 3 years ago

The better of countries have already reached the point where increase in GDP doesn't increase wellbeing, and wellbeing is actually in decline.

livrem2• 3 years ago

This is probably one of the reasons why there is finally talk in some countries of moving on to a four-day week.

WalterBright6• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

jschveibinz2• 3 years 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.

Aeolun• 3 years ago

Have this in too many countries, and we’ll have a world war on our hands again.

makeitdouble2• 3 years ago

That's a good point. A nuance to that would be that not every field impacts the economy, or put another way, our economies work with a lot of inefficiencies.

There could be a future where the fields that matter the most are heavily impacted and most of the work is automatized, while a flurry of other parts are strictly kept off AI and automatization.

I have in mind the extent to which agriculture requires way fewer people that we'd imagine given its scale and importance, while we have people making money doing funny faces on camera [0].

[0] that's also absolutely needed by the society, but it's not at the same primary level

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

Another edgy soundbite to further pump up the AI hype-mythos.

creer10• 3 years 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.

tibbydudeza3• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

hef198988• 3 years ago

So, can we use "just learn to use promps" for white collar folks and software devs risk loosing their jobs because of AI?

throwuwu• 3 years ago

Woah woah woah buddy you’ve got that completely backwards. Journalists started that whole learn to code bullshit and then got justly lampooned about it when there were a bunch of media lay offs afterwards. It was a huge meme a while back so I’m not sure how you missed it.

throwaway290• 3 years ago

No need to look too far back, the similar big bait and switch by ClosedAI/Microsoft is happening right now.

creer10• 3 years ago

It turns out manufacturing is actually doing fine in the US as an industry. Just very different and probably employing higher skilled machinists (and at CNC machines).

But meanwhile Denmark has been making a go at a constructive, thought out, response. Perhaps let's look at how that works - who retrains for what? (Which I don't know in detail.)

ralfd• 3 years ago

Hu? The "learn to code" was not coming from the tech field itself (programmers know that coding is hard and FAANG are not hiring coal miners), but used as a dig against out-of-touch journalists who wrote articles like that:

https://imgur.com/TKX47O3

… and, well, infamously Joe Biden in his 2019 campaign:

https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/47...

Biden said, “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!” According to Weigel, the comment was met with silence from the audience.

makeitdouble2• 3 years ago

Well put.

To note, luddites' issues were not just losing their job. Let's remember that the earlier machines were very crude, safety was absolutely not in their design, and a worker life's also didn't have much weight. So, the early days of machine assisted production were in inhumane conditions, people losing limbs, kids getting killed in them (less skills needed also meant kid labour was a viable option) etc.

So yes, regulation on how the machines work, how much they get introduced, how the workers are impacted, trial periods to see the impacts etc. should help a lot in all respects. The difficult part being that those all mean putting breaks on profit making.

hef198988• 3 years ago

Even more cynical, small kids were sent into said machines to conduct maintenance while the machine was running!

topaz03• 3 years ago

To add to your note: iirc the Luddites were also concerned because the quality of the cloth produced by the machines was worse than the handmade stuff, beyond all of the labor abuses and job losses. Another parallel to the AI age.

xorcist• 3 years ago

Your comments fall into exactly the trap the article talks about. The luddites were painted as being against automation. That's only partially true, at best. Destroying machines was not the point. It was just the only thing that hurt and got remembered.

It was not layoffs that caused the revolts much worsening working conditions. They wanted things like getting paid in the promised time frame, and not having their children killed. It seems the protests were sprawling and later integrated every disappointment under the sun.

The other side took that as an opportunity to paint them as being generally anti progressive and against all forms of mechanization, but from what I understand there's not much to suggest that was actually true. Yes, machines were broken but so were a lot of other things as the protests turned violent.

Our lesson from the luddies should be that winners write history, we should not reiterate a centuries old smear campaign.

creer10• 3 years ago

It was not layoffs that caused the revolts much worsening working conditions.

I read the article (twice - it's interesting), and I wrote "spend all the time they do have in a ludicrous war".

For the workers of the time it looked probably like a fast combination of things. Which the author kinda summarizes as "the inequitable profitability of machines". Things likely included: at first a boom in employment: the factories started at the same time the old, somewhat distributed production method mostly continued - but probably with minimal worker freedom of choice as to who went to which. Then layoffs as the old method just about disappears and more factories start or fail in seemingly (to the workers) random occurences. Then working conditions as factories no doubt did not start safe or comfortable. Then like you say every complaint under the sun.

I don't think it matters actually: the workers reacted to upheaval and probably felt they had no time to be heard. That's the complaint we hear now: "The current jobs are going and that's not right". That's the point of my response: "How does that help anything or anyone?". The lesson should be to try responses that actually have a chance to succeed as opposed to getting in the papers for (metaphorically) breaking frames. Denmark and Co seem to have thought up something in the right general direction.

devinjon• 3 years ago

At times, the destruction was also quite utilitarian. For example, if you destroyed a piece of agricultural equipment, and it took three months to get another one up from London, you and your chums had work for the season. That's an entirely rational course of action (though not necessarily the most effective or moral one).

sandworm101• 3 years ago

> to recognize a looming availability of human workforce which might be useful for some (other) business opportunity.

In other words: a cheap labor force of people now desperate enough to accept lower compensation that their previous employment. If these later employers were able/willing to pay a similar wage, they would have already been doing so. Predicting a forthcoming a wave of despite people as a business opportunity, a chance to pay people lower wages tomorrow than you would have to today ... that is a dark sentiment. I think twitter is going to fail, but I'm going to wait on launching my new startup until the market is flooded with x-twitter employees willing to work for peanuts. Dark.

creer10• 3 years ago

You can call it dark, or you can hire the many fine software people laid off from the twitter ridiculosity. Your choice.

The job market is strange currently. Low unemployement rate (in part because of how many people withdrew). Businesses complaining they can't find people (some in part because they offer too little money). Many perenially underemployed. Absurd hiring processes (because of perceived cost of hiring the wrong person rather than nobody at all.)

My point is that simply "calling it dark" is not helpful to any of the participants.

avgcorrection4• 3 years ago

Under the current regime jobs can be automated away and the businesses will reap 100% of the profit unless there is a union standing in its way: AI could be used on footage of a day's work some actor and recreate their likeness forever. Paid for one day, then the derived work is owned by the business forever.

We could for example say that 90% of jobs get automated away. The benefit for the businesses are astronomical as all those jobs get turned into direct profit. Meanwhile the workers get the change to... upskill? Yeah, so they just have to “upskill” forever while the businesses get free profit because they sit on the means of automation. (Remind me how the businesses have to put in work, here? Seems like they only get the upsides while the workers get all the downsides.)

Until there is nothing to upskill into anymore because only 12% of the labor pool is needed for actual work.

The notion that workers and employers are anywhere near to being peer competitors is bizarre.

rakoo• 3 years ago

Your proposed solution doesn't solve anything, it only delays it.

As long as workers are not self-organizing, top to bottom, up to and including what to produce, how much to priduce and how to produce it, the domination will exist. What is the added value to the society of having bosses ? Of having people not producing but deciding how to produce ?

Scratch the destruction of machines, the sudden uprise, the distinction between what group acted and what group negotiated. The real lesson to learn from this all: society doesn't need someone telling you what to do if they're not also a worker.

danShumway4• 3 years 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.

jillesvangurp2• 3 years 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.

fhd23• 3 years 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.

zirgs4• 3 years 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.

ojo-rojo• 3 years ago

What about this guy:

"the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die"

"Shut down all the large GPU clusters...be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike"

https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-no...

ImHereToVote7• 3 years ago

China actually has regulation for safe AI. It's hard to say how "safe" that regulation is. But it's better than what US is doing with OpenAI. Essentially do whatever lol.

https://www.lw.com/admin/upload/SiteAttachments/Chinas-New-A...

jillesvangurp2• 3 years ago

They also use AI to monitor and police their own citizens. AI serves the common good there and is a tool that is wielded by the elite that dictates what that common good is. Nominally in their subject's name of course. But it's not a democracy.

yolkedgeek• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

sp5272• 3 years 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-dis...

Kbelicius• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

Directly make me think about Bill Joy: Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us

https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/

https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/12/02/bill-joy-why-the-fut...

shanusmagnus4• 3 years 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• 3 years 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_go9• 3 years ago

Along with being skilled laborers, Luddites were also proprietors and small business owners.

hef198988• 3 years 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.

davidgoudet5• 3 years 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.

0dayz4• 3 years ago

That is not what the prejorative mean, I don't see the point in making this political.

bbor• 3 years ago

I don’t think “only rich people are worried about automation” is a very reasonable take. And the scale is a bit different - the luddites weren’t throwing the economy into disarray, they were trying to stop it from changing.

softg2• 3 years ago

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.

Do you mean a strike? A very common event in many first-world countries like the US or France ?

Muromec• 3 years ago

important parts of production systems and threaten people's lives

Which is fair and proportional if people doing it got their own livelihood threatened by introduction of said systems. Especially in 19th century when not having a work to do meant not having food.

tibbydudeza3• 3 years ago

When you are a top dog in a system it is easy to say cute things like this.

hef198988• 3 years ago

It is sometimes scary how long propaganda continues to work. In the case of the Luddites, ot was factory owners propaganda about, rightfully, discruntled workers opossing abuse and exploitation.

In a sense, this propaganda win in England gave us the current oppossition to unions we see in the US and among corporations.

FrustratedMonky4• 3 years ago

No It is pejorative in First World also. I'd say the dominant view is that it is pejorative .

Really, all through collage and career, in the US for last 30 years.

Calling someone a Luddite was an insult, someone that is standing in the way, not smart, desiring to just go live on a farm without any technology because it is all just too complicated.

I've never heard the term used in a positive way.

Not saying this is true of the actual Luddites, just how the term is used in the US.

greenhearth• 3 years ago

The sense of the word "luddite" (I guess until this recent rethought) has always been pejorative, and has zero dependency on political ideology. Why even bring it into the conversation, unless you're trying to stir some shit up.

pipes• 3 years ago

Presumably you work in technology, yet you see destroying technology as heroic?

dudefeliciano• 3 years ago

Did you read the article? The whole point of it is about "rethinking the luddites" to understand them as pro workers rights (which would be nice to have more of in our field), rather than anti technology.

diogenes4• 3 years ago

It's certainly used to describe certain reactionaries even if it doesn't make sense squared historically.

dcgudeman• 3 years ago

Seriously? You consider people who resist technological advancement "heros"? Do you not work in tech? Why are you on hacker news? I honestly don't understand the motivation of anti-technology people who frequent hacker news. It makes no sense to me.

mbwgh• 3 years 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.

0dayz4• 3 years 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.

killjoywashere• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/ZUiC7

roschdal• 3 years ago

The Luddites had it right all along.

jwie• 3 years 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.

klik994• 3 years 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• 3 years 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...

klik994• 3 years 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.

avgcorrection4• 3 years 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?

klik994• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

Rethinking the Luddites

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