The Luddites and their sympathizers were often shot. Some labourers displaced by the mechanical looms did find work elsewhere... if you mean workhouses. You see, history is written by the winners and the capital holders won.
The modern perception of Luddites as being "anti-progress," is the myth written by the winners.
The real history was that they were arguing for better working conditions, abolishing child labour, and social safety nets for workers displaced by machines. The problem was that unions hadn't been invented yet and people working in these textile factories had little leverage. So they made leverage by destroying the machines in an attempt to intimidate the capital holders to the negotiating table.
It didn't work in the end.
History might not be repeating today with AI tools being foisted upon us everywhere but it sure does rhyme.
This article misuses the term Luddites, or at least references an erroneous use.
I think the modern "you were wrong about the Luddites" meme is honestly a bit exhausting. The movement was about breaking the machines. You can find a sensible argument in there somewhere if you look at it sideways, just like you can defend rioters in a protest by taking a reductionist view that flattens everything. I mean sure, you can do it, I'm just not going to take it very seriously.
I'm glad we use electric bulbs instead of paying the lamplighters union to light our streetlamps at night... even if those jobs are lost.[^1] If we can replace superfluous work with machines, we should. The issues of capital capturing all of those gains is obviously one we should fight against politically, but the idea that we have folks doing jobs that don't need to be done by humans pretends that humans can't do other things.
Unless we want to rid the world of trains and automobiles to preserve the mule drawn barges of the 1800's,[^2] then we need to face the fact that creative destruction is progress, and we will destroy jobs and everyone will be wealthier for it. We can support redistribution of wealth and social safety nets while also trying to reduce the amount of labor needed to do mechanized tasks. To do that, however, we need an electorate that is actually interested in progress and change, rather than an electorate that wants nothing to change ever, because they are riddled with nostalgia about life before these darn kids came along with their technology.
> Unless we want to rid the world of trains and automobiles to preserve the mule drawn barges of the 1800's,[^2] then we need to face the fact that creative destruction is progress, and we will destroy jobs and everyone will be wealthier for it.
not all technological advance is beneficial
generative AI reminds me of tetraethyllead
it made a couple of people fantastically rich, whilst silently causing immense damage to both the world and society
I'm a big fan of agriculture as a civilizational stepping stone, but apparently the diet (and height, and risk of malnutrition, etc) of the average hunter-gatherer was richer in vitamins, minerals, etc, than the diet of a the average farmer.
Since most of the world switched to farming around 5000 years ago (I think), that means that our average diet regressed for at least 3500 of those years.
So, if you think about it, assuming the much larger farming tribe next to you did not kill you and your entire tribe, agriculture was a bit of a mistake, at an individual level.
I agree with the other commenter, there's a chance the current incarnation of LLMs (and social media, etc) might be looked upon, in the future, as equivalent to the discovery of tobacco or leaded gasoline.
It's not a meme, it's history. The machine breaking was a form of collective action by violence to form solidarity among workers who were under threat of losing wages and their livelihoods by the policies and actions of capital holders, not the machines themselves.
The capital holders spun the tale in retrospect that the movement was about the machines. "They just can't see progress! How daft do you have to be to not see the value of these wonderful machines! The productivity allows these people new leisure and the chance to do meaningful work... and they want to tear it down! How backward!"
It was about rights, liberties, and solidarity of workers. Some people did care about the quality of the textiles. But that's not enough to spark violent action in order to negotiate for better... textiles? No, it was for better working conditions, abolishment of child labour, etc.
Consider also that at the time, England was fighting Napolean on the European continent as well as the War of 1812 in North America. The textile industry was not good at allocating capital to survive the ups and downs: the factory owners only allocated enough to produce the next order. Layoffs were frequent, workers were over worked, and often paid little. Children were often employed because they were cheaper and had no bargaining power.
And where did the textile workers get displaced to? The myth from the capitalists is that they'd find new productive work elsewhere! It turns out... workhouses, the legally sanctioned indentured servitude that lasted up until the 1930s.
Had the Luddites won I doubt they would have destroyed all of the looming machines and forced us back into the days of hand-crafted textiles. The idea is preposterous. But maybe the workhouses wouldn't have developed, maybe there would have been more sensible labour laws earlier on. And we'd still have a more predictable and sensible textile industry.
There is a no-AI audience because "AI" is now associated to jumping on the latest bandwagon for no discernible reason (and if there's a reason, it's usually for getting VC money). And price increases as a bonus.
There is a no-AI audience because vendors turn this crap on by default and I don't know where my data (which may not even belong to me but to a customer!) goes.
"AI" is the new Clippy. Except MS didn't charge extra for Clippy.
It's also synonymous with bad art, bad writing, climate irresponsibility, and hallucination. The problem is, people want to do the least amount of work possible and go home at 5, so they're all too happy to use the tech that their employer is forcing down their throats.
What’s interesting about this take, and I don’t disagree with the sentiment, is watching Apple get skewered by fumbling AI integration on the iPhone. That’s obviously of their own doing since they turned on their marketing machine on full blast and made promises. But some users seemed really disappointed in their lack of AI features compared to Android. I don’t think anyone would be disappointed for removal of Clippy.
In context I wouldn't assume so. An opt-in experience assumes someone has provided proactive, affirmative consent. An opt-out experience assumes no such consent.
By saying "opt-in by default," author is making the subtle point that positive, affirmative consent is assumed - not just that the features are literally on by default.
I have been working on this idea of a curators only social media. where instead of algorithms delivering you content, you follow people whose taste you appreciate. The original idea came from having your own "tv station". If you think about what cable tv is, it's basically a 24 hour block that the station manager could decide what to put on. Station managers with good taste (and perhaps deep pockets) could put on consistently great content. Like, it was actually nice to watch Comedy Central or Cartoon Network at some point. So I had this idea to build a website where you get a timeline where you can add youtube videos that you think are important and they will play during the day when you set them up to play. So a person could watch your channel and watch whatever you wanted to be on at that time. Everything would be curated instead of algorithmically delivered. I guess it's not a novel idea, but I haven't put it all together yet, i have been just working on this repo: https://github.com/mnky9800n/timeline-tv-studio
To be honest, I’d treat your service like I treat IPTV. I would use your service for exposure to things I might enjoy and for curated lists and then go watch those things somewhere more convenient. Or I’d leave it on for my dogs.
TV schedules, the things shows had to do for those schedules, and advertisements feel like something I escaped from and I don’t see the appeal of going back at all. The only two benefits to me are: Knowing someone else is also watching the same thing (which could be done for streaming with a simple “viewers” count; and limited selection “forcing” me to watch something I wouldn’t otherwise watch. But that doesn’t really exist in this world anymore.
Yeah that's all true and I agree with you. I just thought it would be fun to be able to create a television station. I always liked the weird al movie UHF as a kid, and I thought maybe it would be fun to have some kind of tv station manager simulator.
I had similar idea but applied to anything that uses some sort of “recommendation engine” internally.
The things I wanted use it for was for Netflix for TV shows and movies, and Yelp for restaurants.
With the restaurant example, the curation can become as strict as dietary requirements (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, halal, etc) that are in some cases regulated by NGOs or government bodies or as flexible as having the same spice tolerance as a friend.
Wouldn't just sharing bookmarks be more usable / efficient than forcing a time when they are played (and might not match others timezone or schedules - say I want to follow someone at the other side of the planet because I like their tastes)?
Asked differently, what does the TV channel-like model brings to the table?
I always thought it would be fun to have a television station when I was a kid. Now I can build the technology to create a facsimile of that. I guess what might be more fun for people would be a game like those game studio simulator games. Then you could just play it when you feel like it.
but yes, i think you are correct, a curator's list maker would be a better version of this idea.
you are probably right. i just was building this as like a side project thing. i never thought anyone would use it. But I do think I would be interested in a kind of curator focused social media.
Except we have a thriving open source software ecosystem where you can have the software you want if you stop making excuses how the terminal makes everything literally unusable. No such thing exists for manufacturing high-tech OLED panels without malware attached to them.
I'm wondering, is there a law stopping me from buying smart TVs wholesale, extracting the parts, recombobulating them into dumb TVs and reselling them?
I think the right tool for the job eventually emerges victorious. Right now AI is shoe-horned absolutely everywhere because it's trendy and no company wants to be seen as lagging -- eventually, it will only remain in product contexts in which it's useful and represents a step forward. At least that's what I hope.
Right now I think there is an audience for no-AI because it's in a lot of places it doesn't belong. After the great rebalancing, maybe it won't be as big of a segment.
I work in decompiling and reverse engineering. One of the important aspects from a legal liability perspective I that anything I produce and share should be a new creative work and not merely a mechanical transformation. I’ve avoided anything with LLMs related to those projects.
I have asked for help on some other projects where I got stuck and thought I’d give it a try. The LLM hallucinated and answer, but then admitted it was wrong when i pointed out the mistake and didn’t help me get any further.
Readit News
The modern perception of Luddites as being "anti-progress," is the myth written by the winners.
The real history was that they were arguing for better working conditions, abolishing child labour, and social safety nets for workers displaced by machines. The problem was that unions hadn't been invented yet and people working in these textile factories had little leverage. So they made leverage by destroying the machines in an attempt to intimidate the capital holders to the negotiating table.
It didn't work in the end.
History might not be repeating today with AI tools being foisted upon us everywhere but it sure does rhyme.
I think the modern "you were wrong about the Luddites" meme is honestly a bit exhausting. The movement was about breaking the machines. You can find a sensible argument in there somewhere if you look at it sideways, just like you can defend rioters in a protest by taking a reductionist view that flattens everything. I mean sure, you can do it, I'm just not going to take it very seriously.
I'm glad we use electric bulbs instead of paying the lamplighters union to light our streetlamps at night... even if those jobs are lost.[^1] If we can replace superfluous work with machines, we should. The issues of capital capturing all of those gains is obviously one we should fight against politically, but the idea that we have folks doing jobs that don't need to be done by humans pretends that humans can't do other things.
Unless we want to rid the world of trains and automobiles to preserve the mule drawn barges of the 1800's,[^2] then we need to face the fact that creative destruction is progress, and we will destroy jobs and everyone will be wealthier for it. We can support redistribution of wealth and social safety nets while also trying to reduce the amount of labor needed to do mechanized tasks. To do that, however, we need an electorate that is actually interested in progress and change, rather than an electorate that wants nothing to change ever, because they are riddled with nostalgia about life before these darn kids came along with their technology.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter
[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse-drawn_boat
not all technological advance is beneficial
generative AI reminds me of tetraethyllead
it made a couple of people fantastically rich, whilst silently causing immense damage to both the world and society
TEL is now universally banned
Since most of the world switched to farming around 5000 years ago (I think), that means that our average diet regressed for at least 3500 of those years.
So, if you think about it, assuming the much larger farming tribe next to you did not kill you and your entire tribe, agriculture was a bit of a mistake, at an individual level.
I agree with the other commenter, there's a chance the current incarnation of LLMs (and social media, etc) might be looked upon, in the future, as equivalent to the discovery of tobacco or leaded gasoline.
The capital holders spun the tale in retrospect that the movement was about the machines. "They just can't see progress! How daft do you have to be to not see the value of these wonderful machines! The productivity allows these people new leisure and the chance to do meaningful work... and they want to tear it down! How backward!"
It was about rights, liberties, and solidarity of workers. Some people did care about the quality of the textiles. But that's not enough to spark violent action in order to negotiate for better... textiles? No, it was for better working conditions, abolishment of child labour, etc.
Consider also that at the time, England was fighting Napolean on the European continent as well as the War of 1812 in North America. The textile industry was not good at allocating capital to survive the ups and downs: the factory owners only allocated enough to produce the next order. Layoffs were frequent, workers were over worked, and often paid little. Children were often employed because they were cheaper and had no bargaining power.
And where did the textile workers get displaced to? The myth from the capitalists is that they'd find new productive work elsewhere! It turns out... workhouses, the legally sanctioned indentured servitude that lasted up until the 1930s.
Had the Luddites won I doubt they would have destroyed all of the looming machines and forced us back into the days of hand-crafted textiles. The idea is preposterous. But maybe the workhouses wouldn't have developed, maybe there would have been more sensible labour laws earlier on. And we'd still have a more predictable and sensible textile industry.
Machines aren't the problem, people are.
There is a no-AI audience because vendors turn this crap on by default and I don't know where my data (which may not even belong to me but to a customer!) goes.
"AI" is the new Clippy. Except MS didn't charge extra for Clippy.
The term for "opt-in by default" is "opt-out".
By saying "opt-in by default," author is making the subtle point that positive, affirmative consent is assumed - not just that the features are literally on by default.
TV schedules, the things shows had to do for those schedules, and advertisements feel like something I escaped from and I don’t see the appeal of going back at all. The only two benefits to me are: Knowing someone else is also watching the same thing (which could be done for streaming with a simple “viewers” count; and limited selection “forcing” me to watch something I wouldn’t otherwise watch. But that doesn’t really exist in this world anymore.
The things I wanted use it for was for Netflix for TV shows and movies, and Yelp for restaurants.
With the restaurant example, the curation can become as strict as dietary requirements (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, halal, etc) that are in some cases regulated by NGOs or government bodies or as flexible as having the same spice tolerance as a friend.
Asked differently, what does the TV channel-like model brings to the table?
but yes, i think you are correct, a curator's list maker would be a better version of this idea.
Right now I think there is an audience for no-AI because it's in a lot of places it doesn't belong. After the great rebalancing, maybe it won't be as big of a segment.
I have asked for help on some other projects where I got stuck and thought I’d give it a try. The LLM hallucinated and answer, but then admitted it was wrong when i pointed out the mistake and didn’t help me get any further.