[arowthway]

I know calling anti-AI people luddites was considered a shallow strawman in 2024 but now I can't help but feel this position of "we should maybe slow down the developement and adoption of new tech to protect jobs / social order / the old way of life" fits luddism well?

[sweezyjeezy]

I agree - but it's too easy to just 'call Luddism', and use the insult to not engage with all of the shared issues that make the comparison apt. Issues like:

- no serious plan for mass unemployment

- the risk of an underemployed middle class leading to violent outcomes as it has in the past

- (many) humans wanting to be useful, to have purpose in life and a place to put their natural ambition

- concentration of economic power in the hands of an ever-shrinking pool of people, from a couple of countries making up 20% of the world population

Luddism came from a place of genuine suffering and fear, which was not misplaced - the industrial revolution lead to amazing new jobs, but not for the Luddites themselves. With AI it's not even clear if those new jobs will come - it seems like the goal is a world where humans will not need to worry about thinking anymore.

So is wanting this to slow down really such a ridiculous notion?

[keybored]

I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone who is brave enough to deserve to be called a (Neo) Luddite.

People that have negative opinions about technological progress at least have the will to form an opinion backed by arguments. Contrast that with the faith order of dismissing negative opinions simply because they are negative about tech. Are technologist tech professionals? Or tech priests? (No wait, priests have to have a theological education where they are taught to make arguments. So can’t be that either.)

[danaris]

The Luddites were able to destroy the mechanical looms because they were right there, in the buildings they worked in, doing the work in front of them. And, of course, because they were fairly straightforward and moderately fragile mechanical devices.

It takes much more bravery—and much more than bravery—to first figure out which datacenters are actually hosting Gemini (or Claude, or ChatGPT, etc), then travel across the country or across the world to where they are, break into what's likely a guarded building, and finally...I guess blow them up? With explosives that are almost certainly illegal just to possess, in contrast to the tools that could be used to break the looms.

And even if they were able to succeed in all this, that would be one datacenter. For one LLM. And its owners would simply be able to route around the damage, and (at least from the sounds of things) there'd be three new datacenters to replace it already scheduled to finish the next week.

So tell us about how much "bravery" it should require to deserve the title of Neo-Luddite.

[keybored]

Any fighting back. Equipment sabotage not needed.

[danaris]

And what, exactly, does "fighting back" look like in this case?

Because people are already taking steps to try to poison the AI training data.

They're trying to create their own art and culture in spite of the machine.

They're protesting the political forces that are enabling the techbros.

They're unionizing in numbers not seen in decades.

What would actually count as "brave" to you, if this isn't it?

[keybored]

How great then.

My reply was aimed at this board.[1] The people who are unhappy about it but “can’t” to anything about it because there are no Sprint points to be awarded for “smashing the machines.” So they resign themselves to technological determinism. Nothing can stand in the way of Progress.

But really this is a subversion or reversal of the stupid, idiotic, decades-old meme of the Luddite-as-insult. It takes no courage, or even thought (see my original reply), to chant that Progress is More Good when that Progress is being lead by the most powerful Capital forces and their collaborators. So that’s why I dismissively replied that I haven’t seen anyone, HERE, that deserves such an honor as to be called a Neo Luddite.

And is it really material if I have in actuality seen one, or two, or five, on Here that deserve this name, when the point is so rhetorical?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48119414