Generative AI is the asbestos of the internet age - Cory Doctorow
While I can’t assure you that no GenAI has touched any of the codebase that this site sits upon, I can say that the words you read are unashamedly made by humans, for humans.
Who were the orginal luddites?
Our friend Ned, later promoted to General, was allegedly an apprentice stocking-frame knitter. Having produced stockings with too much sag, he was instructed to “square his needles” which he did, with a hammer, destroying the frame (and presumably) heading to the pub.
This story lay dormant until groups of the English working class decided to adopt Ned as a figurehead in the early 19th century, donning the mantle of Luddism as a broad cause without a leader, in a similar fashion to the modern use of the term ‘antifa’. There is no antifa leader, just as Ned was not the leader of an itinerant band of frame breakers and others doing violence to those dark, satanic mills.
What did they do?
Riots, murder, unlawful oathing as well as ‘frame breaking’, their stock-in-trade depending on which group of luddites you were talking to. It is also reasonable to incorporate the violence that took place under the name of Captain Swing, which saw similar concerns held by the agricultural workers manifest in social unrest in the south and east of England.
They wrote a mean letter, usually attributed to General Ned Ludd, and it was these that struck fear into the industrialists and politicians of the age.
Y tho
Predating Das Kapital by some decades, the broad issue at hand was the imposition of technology on a workforce, driving down wages and destroying jobs while producing an inferior product that nobody wanted.
That sounds familiar…
Doesn’t it.
The New Luddites
And so to the Brave New World that is the 21st Century, specifically the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty six. Large Language Models are being pushed by Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic et al as the cause of, and the solution to, all the world’s problems.
Great. Smashing. Super.
Who are The New Luddites?
You, me, or anyone else who is done with the latest entry in a list that includes Tulipmania, The South Sea Company and la Compagnie du Mississippi.