As artificial intelligence races ahead in the United States, so has the backlash.This month, New York moved closer to passing into law a pause on the development of new data centers that power the technology.This graduation season, tech leaders who invoke AI optimism in their commencement speeches are getting booed by classes entering the workforce with anxieties about what AI could mean for their job prospects.When someone dares to question the wonders of technology, there's a handy word used to mock them: Luddites.David Friedberg, a tech investor and adviser to the White House, recently dropped the term on the popular business podcast All-In: "The idea that AI is going to destroy jobs is a Luddite idea that is being disproven every single day."Luddites are often accused of being anti-tech and anti-innovation.
But Brian Merchant, a tech journalist and self-proclaimed Luddite, says true adherents aren't anti-tech."The real Luddites are anti-technology being used to exploit people," he said."A Luddite asks: 'What are the implications of this technology? How is it going to impact society? Should we engage with this technology on the grounds that it might make somebody a lot of money or should we engage with it on the grounds that this could have real impacts for the way that people work and live?' "The original Luddites were 19th-century English textile makers who protested the ways mechanization was disrupting their livelihoods by smashing automated power looms.
They took their name from a Robin Hood-like folk hero — a disgruntled apprentice worker who historians say likely never existed."It was either a self-descriptor or it was a laudatory term among them that came to be used as a descriptive term by the authorities," said Kevin Binfield, an English professor at Murray State University in Kentucky who edited Writings of the Luddites, an anthology of texts written by the first Luddites and their sympathizers.How, then, did Luddite become a diss?For this installm...