The New Luddites Aren’t Backing Down::Activists are organizing to combat generative AI and other technologies—and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process.
The New Luddites Aren’t Backing Down::Activists are organizing to combat generative AI and other technologies—and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process.
It is a little strange to me that people say it won’t change things because the AI will need someone to tell it what to do. It’s like saying robots won’t change the automotive industry because someone will need to fix them. Well it turns out, if you only need one person to fix all the machines or tell the AI what to do, then the companies will fire everyone else, especially if that was their main skill set and where their experience was. They can get a different job but it will be entry level and they might not be able to live the same quality of life, support a family, fill their retirement or pay debts they may have accrued with the expectation of a certain salary.
There are manufacturing center towns that are basically graveyards now because of that (yes, also globalist and international capitalism, too, but it’s both. Jon Oliver had an episode about it with sources). The same thing happened to call centers and operators before. Things sucked for certain people during that time, and from an abstract POV society was okay, but imagine if the person it sucked for is you. Then you can understand why lots of people are freaking out.
Maybe the worry for the next 20 years is that we will only get jobs fixing the robots but the economy used to be 90% farmers that’s not actually worrying to me.
The scary part is that eventually the robots can fix themselves better than we can and there will be literally no reason for most humans to work. We really have to get working on a plan for that. Our only plan so far as automation has made us more productive is to continue working the same amount but on different things, and AGI is where that really breaks down.