Democrats Must Oppose the AI Industry

[eppur_se_muova]

13. The Luddites may not have been who you think they were.

Luddites were protesting against changes they thought would make their lives much worse, changes that were part of a new market system. Before this time, craftspeople would do their work for a set price, the usual price. They did not want this new system that involved working out how much work they did, how much materials cost, and how much profit there would be for the factory owner.

As with AI, the biggest threat to the weavers was that machinery was eliminating their jobs, while doing nothing to provide them with an alternative way to make a living. The popular conception that they were simply 'anti-progress' or 'anti-automation' is a canard. They saw well-paying jobs disappearing, and no one in authority seemed to care. Sound familiar ?

The Luddites lost because there was just too much profit to be made from automation, and it would be used to capture political power which all but forced its adoption. Again, sound familiar ?