Artificial intelligence is scary. But history reminds us that tech makes lives better, not worse

A neo-Luddite movement is on the rise, and it’s now chic to denigrate modern technology and long for the “good old days” of the pre-industrial past.But we tend to forget that the typical American is living a healthier, more comfortable life than even royalty once did.Most of our ancestors lived in total darkness after sundown.

Roughly half of people didn’t make it to age 20 in early modern Europe.Cannibalism could occur during famine not so long ago.

Even the palace at Versailles lacked bathrooms.A new book argues that technological progress — and the much-maligned Industrial Revolution — is the only thing that separates us from such unthinkable living standards.“I don’t think people appreciate our modern abundance enough, nearly enough,” Chelsea Follett, author of “The Grim Old Days,” told The Post.“We all take the world that we are born into as the default.

We think this is the normal condition of humanity to have running water and electricity and grocery stores with more food than any one person could ever eat.”As we face down the prospect of AI transforming the economy and changing our lives, it’s important to take a lesson from history and remember that technology has consistently brought us prosperity — and not the doom that naysayers have consistently claimed it would.Follett, a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, argues that virtually every facet of life — from birth to death, and for rich and poor alike — has been improved by technology.To prove her point, she tours readers through the lives of our ancestors in order to “deromanticize the past.”“Before industrialization, snail-like progress verging on stagnation was the general rule,” Follett writes.

“Rose-colored views of the past bear no resemblance to reality.The world our ancestors faced was in fact more gruesome than modern minds can fathom.”Historical cities that we tend to idealize, like Renaissance Flo...