this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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Fuck AI
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Women workers in Britain attacked the Spinning Jenny because it speeded up the spinning process, and consequently, reduced labour demand. This caused a valid fear of unemployment among women working in the woollen industry. Till date, they had survived on hand spinning, but this was placed in peril by the new machine.
Who wants to go back to spinning wool by hand now?
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 OG MBA’s
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."
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.
IMO people are less likely to reject AI in some use cases, taking over medial tasks (e.g. email drafting, writing cover letters)
BUT it is the sneaky and persistent way in which many "AI assistants" are forced on users with no option to opt out. We all know it's just to open out huge data gathering services and increase revenue, not for our benefit.
What the fuck even is this comparison?
Is generative AI anywhere replacing human manual labor? No, we have robots for that. They are programmed. They’ve been around for a long time.
Just wait.
Data entry clerks, receptionists, office assistants, customer support representatives, document reviewers, cashiers, sales associates, inventory managers, telemarketers, market researchers, assembly line workers, quality control inspectors, warehouse pickers and packers, delivery drivers, forklift operators, taxi and rideshare drivers, truck drivers, train operators, bank tellers, loan officers, tax preparers, bookkeepers, financial analysts, content writers, video editors, graphic designers, translators, transcribers, social media managers, radiologists, pathologists, medical coders, pharmacy technicians, tutors, language teachers, test proctors, curriculum developers, paralegals, legal researchers, contract analysts, compliance officers, hotel receptionists, travel agents, restaurant servers, chefs, crop harvesters, livestock monitors, farm equipment operators, security guards, fraud analysts, alarm system monitors, technical support analysts, market forecasters, personal assistants, event planners, librarians.
All at risk.