Uhhh, the actual fear wasn’t unemployment, it was taking skill and care out of the equation. A lot of the women (and men) that attacked the emerging British textile factories were worried LESS about losing their own livelihoods to industry than they were about the absolutely brutal conditions people were placed under in these factories. Their counterargument was large-scale shops doing hand spinning or machine-aided spinning LED BY THOSE WOMEN instead of some posh asshole who hasn’t ever spun wool - still producing things slower, but with theoretically zero children getting mangled by a wool carder.
The Luddites (of whom the spinning jenny protests were a part) didn’t fear progress because it might make them obsolete, they argued that rapacious pursuit of more efficient methods by people who didn’t understand that industry, who hadn’t worked in that industry, was going to make those industries worse, and also get people harmed in some cases.
The whole Luddite thing is definitely the narrative of the ruling class. That group had a bunch of great reasons for not wanting industrialization, including attempting to maintain the original “cottage industry.”
rapacious pursuit of more efficient methods by people who didn’t understand that industry, who hadn’t worked in that industry, was going to make those industries worse, and also get people harmed in some cases.
Just like the Spinning Jenny back then, AI is as bad as it’s ever going to be today. It’s only going to get better and jobs will be made redundant, I’ll put my money on that. It’s a real fear that many people have, whether they’ll admit it or not.
You can absolutely argue that the human touch is irreplaceable and just as there is a niche market for hand spun cotton now, I’m sure that there will be cases where humans are still employed for jobs that could arguably be filled by AI in the future.
How many of the clothes that you own use hand spun threads? I’ll bet on zero.
Just like the Spinning Jenny back then, AI is as bad as it’s ever going to be today. It’s only going to get better and jobs will be made redundant, I’ll put my money on that. It’s a real fear that many people have, whether they’ll admit it or not.
It’s also as good as its ever going to be today (or the near future).
Degenerative AI has already dropped off in usage to the point that major stakeholders in it are terrified. It’s going to go into the same winter that every previous “no really this time we’ve got it right” AI crazes went.
Imagine looking at biplanes in the twenties, only pointing out the flaws, unable to imagine the huge improvements in flight technology that are to come over the next few decades.
There’s absolutely no reason to think that AI won’t improve in the same way almost any other new technology has over time.
Will there be peaks and dips along the way? Sure, but progress is almost inevitable.
I am amused that of all innovations available, you are going 250 years back to a very basic machine. Next you’ll be comparing LLMs to the concept of sand casting copper ax blade being better than knapping a rock into a hamd ax.
Not something like how Email, SMS and Instant messaging have almost completely replaced fax and telephone calls.
I used the spinning jenny because it is a classic example of a new technology that workers hated at the time and actively tried to destroy but the descendants of which are now considered the standard way to produce threads.
It wasn’t a simple machine back then, it was revolutionary.
Uhhh, the actual fear wasn’t unemployment, it was taking skill and care out of the equation. A lot of the women (and men) that attacked the emerging British textile factories were worried LESS about losing their own livelihoods to industry than they were about the absolutely brutal conditions people were placed under in these factories. Their counterargument was large-scale shops doing hand spinning or machine-aided spinning LED BY THOSE WOMEN instead of some posh asshole who hasn’t ever spun wool - still producing things slower, but with theoretically zero children getting mangled by a wool carder.
The Luddites (of whom the spinning jenny protests were a part) didn’t fear progress because it might make them obsolete, they argued that rapacious pursuit of more efficient methods by people who didn’t understand that industry, who hadn’t worked in that industry, was going to make those industries worse, and also get people harmed in some cases.
They were right, by the way.
The whole Luddite thing is definitely the narrative of the ruling class. That group had a bunch of great reasons for not wanting industrialization, including attempting to maintain the original “cottage industry.”
The OG MBA’s
Just like the Spinning Jenny back then, AI is as bad as it’s ever going to be today. It’s only going to get better and jobs will be made redundant, I’ll put my money on that. It’s a real fear that many people have, whether they’ll admit it or not.
You can absolutely argue that the human touch is irreplaceable and just as there is a niche market for hand spun cotton now, I’m sure that there will be cases where humans are still employed for jobs that could arguably be filled by AI in the future.
How many of the clothes that you own use hand spun threads? I’ll bet on zero.
It’s also as good as its ever going to be today (or the near future).
Degenerative AI has already dropped off in usage to the point that major stakeholders in it are terrified. It’s going to go into the same winter that every previous “no really this time we’ve got it right” AI crazes went.
Imagine looking at biplanes in the twenties, only pointing out the flaws, unable to imagine the huge improvements in flight technology that are to come over the next few decades.
There’s absolutely no reason to think that AI won’t improve in the same way almost any other new technology has over time.
Will there be peaks and dips along the way? Sure, but progress is almost inevitable.
I am amused that of all innovations available, you are going 250 years back to a very basic machine. Next you’ll be comparing LLMs to the concept of sand casting copper ax blade being better than knapping a rock into a hamd ax.
Not something like how Email, SMS and Instant messaging have almost completely replaced fax and telephone calls.
I used the spinning jenny because it is a classic example of a new technology that workers hated at the time and actively tried to destroy but the descendants of which are now considered the standard way to produce threads.
It wasn’t a simple machine back then, it was revolutionary.