{"id":65779,"date":"2023-09-26T19:36:06","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T23:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/investing\/can-a-new-luddite-rebellion-rise-against-big-tech-were-in-a-place-where-trouble-could-find-us-pretty-quickly-author-says\/"},"modified":"2023-09-26T19:36:08","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T23:36:08","slug":"can-a-new-luddite-rebellion-rise-against-big-tech-were-in-a-place-where-trouble-could-find-us-pretty-quickly-author-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=65779","title":{"rendered":"Can a new Luddite rebellion rise against Big Tech? \u2018We\u2019re in a place where trouble could find us pretty quickly,\u2019 author says."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The term \u201cLuddite\u201d has been used as a pejorative term for centuries, as a way to suggest someone is fearful or ignorant of technology.<\/p>\n<p>Brian Merchant wants that to end. He would like to see workers instead proudly wear the term today as they fight the kind of forces that turned English textile workers in the late 1700s and early 1800s into Luddites, who attacked factories and smashed machines that were destroying their jobs.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cIt perpetually needs to be contested, this idea that a Luddite is somebody who\u2019s dumb or backward-looking. That sort of assumption benefits the people who make the most money making technology products,\u201d the Los Angeles Times columnist and author told MarketWatch. \u201cSo it\u2019s in the interests of a lot of people to keep the idea alive that to push back against [technology\u2019s effects] is sort of automatically counter to progress or a bad idea or makes you dumb.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Merchant\u2019s new book, \u201cBlood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech,\u201d is available today, and it re-examines the history of the Luddites\u2019 rebellion against the forces of the Industrial Revolution. Merchant also compares that story with current efforts to resist technological changes to workers\u2019 lives from the effects of Big Tech and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>MarketWatch recently spoke with Merchant about the book, how the two eras are similar and different, and what a worker rebellion in the AI era could look like. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MarketWatch:<\/strong> Your book describes the Luddites as workers who destroyed machinery that was being used by factory owners to automate their jobs in the hands of children and unskilled workers, and had the support of a majority of English people, eventually leading to changes in the law. Why is that not the story that has largely been told in the centuries since?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Merchant: <\/strong>The saying goes that the victors write the history books, and that\u2019s very much true in the Luddites\u2019 case. The [British government] kind of had an old-school propaganda campaign to paint the Luddites as backward from the very beginning, and they deployed the military to occupy the areas where the Luddites were active. So they also used a much more blunt tool to just crush the Luddites outright and to send this message that if you oppose technology, not only will we think you\u2019re dumb and write that in royal proclamations, but we will also crush your movements physically by arming factory owners, by supplying military garrisons to protect factories and put them at the service of the entrepreneurs of the day. \u2026 Now the assumption is, if you\u2019re a Luddite and you oppose technology, you\u2019re doomed because technology inevitably advances and inevitably progresses and to go against it is foolish because the forces of technology are so powerful. And that\u2019s not actually the full story. <\/p>\n<p>The Luddites had a saying that showed up in the letters that they would write that they were \u2018opposed to the machinery hurtful to commonality.\u2019 and that\u2019s really the key thing \u2014 it wasn\u2019t about opposing technological development, full stop, it was about protesting the parts that were particularly exploitative, that were being used to degrade wages, to put them out of work, to allow the entrepreneurs to gain power and break the power of the workers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MW: <\/strong>You write that what the Luddites faced is analogous to Big Tech and the current state of work, even though you were writing it before generative artificial intelligence arrived and threatened more jobs. Where do you see the strongest parallels, and where does generative AI fit in?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Merchant:<\/strong> You look at the past few decades, productivity has gone up and up and up, corporate profits and CEO pay have gone up and up and up, and yet worker pay has been stagnant. So it\u2019s a great example of exactly the kind of thing that the Luddites were protesting, because a big part of that story is automation machinery, robotics and factories, software automation, things that are making workers more productive, but they\u2019re just not seeing the benefits, and that\u2019s what we stand to see more in this new AI era. If anything it\u2019s going to serve the interests of the folks who either can afford the tools and make the decision to deploy them or companies selling AI outright. <\/p>\n<p>I think that we\u2019re in another moment that very much resembles the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the sense that we have a lot of people with access to tools that could be very disruptive if they can get the capital to put behind it, and there\u2019s a lot of norms and standards and people with livelihoods that are suddenly feeling very vulnerable, especially creative workers, writers, artists, illustrators, stuff that can now kind of be done with generative AI. It doesn\u2019t have to be done well, it doesn\u2019t have to be done better than the human, it just has to be done well enough to meet the satisfaction of the boss or somebody who would be needing that service. <\/p>\n<p><strong>MW: <\/strong>The Luddites were crushed by the government, but there were laws that sprung up from that period to protect workers. As the push for legislation to regulate AI begins, however, little of it seems to be focused on protecting workers in a similar fashion, especially in the wake of OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Merchant:<\/strong> I think part of that is intentional. OpenAI and its ilk from the beginning have pushed this narrative that AI is all-powerful, so please regulate us so it\u2019s developed safely. But they\u2019ve moved the Overton window, or are trying to, so far down the line where they\u2019re trying to consider existential crises \u2014 like the biggest threat is that AI is going to become Skynet, not that it\u2019s going to be incredibly disruptive in the workplace. Meanwhile, they\u2019re trying to do the very mundane thing of selling enterprise tech contracts because that\u2019s where they\u2019re going to make all their money. They\u2019re up to a billion in revenues and that\u2019s where it\u2019s coming from. <\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, it\u2019s a huge oversight that we\u2019re not looking at the labor implications here by and large, with the caveat that on the state level there are some interesting things being done. California has a bill put forward that would do things like help actors prevent AI replicas of them being used in contracts, giving them a little more power. That does kind of feel like nibbling around the edges a little bit, but it\u2019s a positive development. But especially federally there\u2019s a totally lackluster or even almost kind of lack entirely of attention given to the labor implications. And I would say that that\u2019s not surprising because that\u2019s been the case for the last at least 10 or 20 years, having the keys handed to Silicon Valley and trusting them to build products and build platforms that are engines for the economy and are ultimately good for most people.<\/p>\n<div data-layout=\"inline\n                \" data-layout-mobile=\"\" class=\"\n          media-object\n          type-InsetPullQuote\n            inline\n    scope-web|mobileapps\n  article__inset\n          article__inset--type-InsetPullQuote\n            article__inset--inline\n  \"><\/p>\n<p>          <!-- eventually when we know what this card will be we can change it and leave this one --><\/p>\n<div class=\"wsj-article-pullquote article__inset__pullquote \">\n<p class=\"pullquote-content article__inset__pullquote__quote\">\n        <span class=\"l-qt article__inset__pullquote__mark--left\">\u201c<\/span>\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t expect Americans to confront a technology, or even the use of an exploitative technology, head-on in this way and say, \u2018no.\u2019 And so that is kind of empowering a lot of people.\u201d <span class=\"r-qt article__inset__pullquote__mark--right\">\u201d<\/span>\n      <\/p>\n<p>        <small><br \/>\n          <span class=\"inset-author article__inset__pullquote__author\">\u2014 Brian Merchant, on Hollywood writers and actors fighting against artificial intelligence<\/span><br \/>\n        <\/small><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>MW: <\/strong>While I see the comparisons between the two periods, there are some stark differences, starting with the fact that about 80% of England was involved in the textile industry in some fashion in the Luddites\u2019 era, but now we have a wide variety of industries at different maturity stages \u2014 Amazon<br \/>\n        AMZN,<br \/>\n        <bg-quote field=\"percentchange\" format=\"0,000.00%\" channel=\"\/zigman2\/quotes\/210331248\/composite\" class=\"negative\">-4.03%<\/bg-quote><br \/>\n       has seen some early organizing efforts that you write about, Hollywood is heavily unionized and just went on strike to fight AI, while industries like gig work are not organized at all. How do workers find common ground to work together across industries?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Merchant:<\/strong> It\u2019s a real consideration and it\u2019s a hard question. One thing that has happened to our economy at large over the last couple of decades now as inequality has widened, as housing prices have gone up, as conditions have sort of worsened for the middle class, I think more people are starting to feel what old-school folks would call class consciousness. There\u2019s a lot of millennials who are now sort of coming to grips with the fact that, as things stand, they are never going to be able to afford a home despite playing by the rules. There are a lot of industries that are very precarious and even if you have a good job, there\u2019s a sense that it could fall away. So I think at a base level, there\u2019s a familiarity in a way that, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, wasn\u2019t the case \u2014 the overworked UPS<br \/>\n        UPS,<br \/>\n        <bg-quote field=\"percentchange\" format=\"0,000.00%\" channel=\"\/zigman2\/quotes\/201245396\/composite\" class=\"negative\">-1.56%<\/bg-quote><br \/>\n       driver can relate to the underpaid journalist, who can relate to the freelance artist whose work is being gobbled up by [generative AI program] Midjourney, who can relate to the coder who\u2019s gotten fired from his second Silicon Valley company within the space of 18 months. <\/p>\n<p>I think it\u2019s really interesting that we\u2019re seeing such stark protests against AI or the use of AI in the workplace from WGA to SAG, those artists. That feels, at least within my lifetime, like a new thing \u2014 you wouldn\u2019t expect Americans to confront a technology, or even the use of an exploitative technology, head-on in this way and say, \u2018no.\u2019 And so that is kind of empowering a lot of people. And there is overlap between a lot of these issues. One of the big things in the auto workers strike is that it requires less labor to make EVs, so that\u2019s a point of contention. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with what is basically automation on the factory line? So there is a lot of overlap, but I think it\u2019s easier for people to kind of see solidarity with each other. At the same time, just look at Silicon Valley. These tech companies are beyond rich, beyond powerful. The people that run them or that founded them are among the richest in human history, and some of them have proven themselves to be controversial at best and bad actors at worst, and have seen their public stock go way down. So it\u2019s all kind of a recipe for some more united protest or more united organizing than we\u2019ve seen in a while. <\/p>\n<p><strong>MW:<\/strong> What does that united protest look like, though? The equivalent to what the Luddites did in their day would be overrunning data centers or something similar \u2014 physically attacking the tech at the center of the issue. I don\u2019t think you\u2019re advocating for that, but if workers can organize across industries, what does the collective action look like?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Merchant:<\/strong> The important difference is that the Luddites were barred legally from organizing \u2014 it was illegal to form a collective bargaining unit, basically, you could be arrested for that. It was also in a time before democracy, so there is no democracy. So I don\u2019t think that we will see the mass adoption of some sort of sabotage tactics in quite the same way so long as we do have access to those tools, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s more of a spiritual adoption of the tactic like when you\u2019re rejecting a technology in a labor contract. <\/p>\n<p>To your larger question \u2014 where do you harness all of this and target it \u2014 the best answer we have right now is folks continuing to organize. I mean organized labor is more popular now, for a reason, than it has been in decades. It\u2019s touching Starbucks<br \/>\n        SBUX,<br \/>\n        <bg-quote field=\"percentchange\" format=\"0,000.00%\" channel=\"\/zigman2\/quotes\/207508890\/composite\" class=\"negative\">-0.80%<\/bg-quote><span>.<\/span><br \/>\n       It\u2019s touching UPS, it\u2019s touching the tech companies, it\u2019s touching Amazon, it\u2019s touching everywhere. \u2026 We\u2019re at a moment where people are supportive of organized labor, are really excited and invigorated by this moment. The UPS drivers won a historic contract and even though the Amazon labor union has had a bunch of defeats, I think there\u2019s still a lot of optimism that things will trend toward more victories in the future. <\/p>\n<p>Right now, there\u2019s a lot of ways to channel a modern Luddite energy into productive projects. My fear would be is if the bottom drops out of the economy, if we see a crash. Right now, we have a pretty tight labor market, we have pretty solid employment even though people justifiably want to make more money and housing costs are too high. But if there was an X factor injected into the mix, then I think we\u2019re in a place where trouble could find us pretty quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>For more: Unions\u2019 push at Amazon, Apple and Starbucks could be \u2018most significant moment in the American labor movement\u2019 in decades <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/can-a-new-luddite-rebellion-rise-against-big-tech-were-in-a-place-where-trouble-could-find-us-pretty-quickly-author-says-f0f0486e?mod=investing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The term \u201cLuddite\u201d has been used as a pejorative term for centuries, as a way to suggest someone is fearful or ignorant of technology. Brian Merchant wants that to end. He would like to see workers instead proudly wear the term today as they fight the kind of forces that turned English textile workers in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-65779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-featured","post_format-post-format-video"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Can a new Luddite rebellion rise against Big Tech? \u2018We\u2019re in a place where trouble could find us pretty quickly,\u2019 author says. | iFintechWorld<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The term \u201cLuddite\u201d has been used as a pejorative term for centuries, as a way to suggest someone is fearful or ignorant of technology.Brian Merchant wants\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=65779\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can a new Luddite rebellion rise against Big Tech? 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