The Monster and the Luddites
Book Week: Blood in the Machine and Charged Bodies. Automation in the 18th and 21st Centuries and the Shapers of Silicon Valley.
THE WEEK
Image of the Week
Technology columnist for the LA Times Brian Merchant has written a page-turner about the Luddite movement and its implications for the era of Generative Artificial Intelligence.
Quote of the Week
“It’s deja vu all over again.”
— not original with Yogi Berra, but he did say it
BOOK WEEK
The Monster and the Luddites
The Monster has many names.
In classic science fiction and in popular movies like The Desk Set, we are warned about the electronic brains, the thinking machines, those revolting robots. But “Artificial Intelligence” is the term of choice today for the Monster. Or particularly, “Generative Artificial Intelligence.”
“Artificial Intelligence” is actually a poor name for the technologies the term has been attached to. It triggers distracting arguments about the nature of intelligence, and it doesn’t even really describe what the technology is. Machine Learning, Large Language Models: those terms are descriptive, while Artificial Intelligence is just a brag.
But as a term to capture the Luddite fears, “Artificial Intelligence” will do just fine. We consider intelligence to be a defining characteristic of humans, so artificial intelligence sounds distinctly creepy. And justly frightening: the idea of artificial devices exhibiting traits we think belong to us triggers primal unease. Like Frankenstein’s creation, it sounds monstrous. It is the Monster.
But it’s not the term “artificial intelligence” that I want to write about here. It’s that other term I used: “Luddite.” Because I used it casually and conventionally, and it really deserves precise and accurate definition.
If everyone who has ever used the word “Luddite” would just go and read Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, we could have more productive arguments about the Monster, about the fears we have regarding artificial intelligence.
The Luddites have been misjudged throughout history. Today the term is routinely used as a pejorative, describing someone blindly and indiscriminately hostile to technology:
Emilio Esteves: “I’m not a Luddite, but I’m outside more than I’m on my computer.”
Elton John: “I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano.”
Studs Terkel: “I’m not a Luddite completely; I believe in refrigerators to cool my martinis.”
In fact, the Luddites were not anti-technology: they were more anti-starvation. Merchant tells the real story of the Luddites and shows how their rebellion has parallels with the current fears about big tech. And that shouldn’t be surprising, because we’re facing the same Monster.
Toward the end of the 18th century, the most important industry in Britain was wool. Wool was the primary fiber used in clothing, and weavers were “the largest single group of industrial workers in England,” historian E. P. Thompson said. The wool trade employed over a million workers.
These were skilled workers —masters of spinning and knitting and weaving and carding — but “skilled work” needs to be understood in the 18th century context. These weavers or carders were descended from generations of weavers or carders. Their particular skills had been a mainstays of their families for hundreds of years. We think casually today of changing careers and learning new skills, but in 18th century Britain, these skills were literally a livelihood — it was how they made a living, in the only life they knew.
And their skilled work was increasingly being replaced by machines. But couldn’t they just learn to run the machines? You know the argument: automation doesn’t replace workers, it just gives them the chance to become more productive. But no: these skilled workers wouldn’t be hired to run the machines, because no skill was required for that task. A child could do it — and in eighteenth century England, that was not a figure of speech.
So the fabric workers, desperate and at their wits’ end, began smashing the machines. They started a revolution, a revolution that nearly became a civil war. And they had a leader, even if he was only a fiction. Nedd Ludd, the machine smasher, striking his blow and then retreating to Sherwood Forest to await his next opportunity to strike, was the legendary leader in whose name the Luddites fought the Monster.
Toward the end of the book, Merchant draws the parallels with the present day, and the implications for the threat of Generative Artificial Intelligence. A couple of takeaways, anyway thoughts that I took away from the book:
The so-called “existential threat” of artificial intelligence may be real, but it is not imminent. The fact that some people actually responsible for developing generative AI disagree — that gives me pause, but I just don’t see it.
The immediate threat is to jobs, and that threat is real and present. Just as it was for the Luddites. We can learn a lot from their experience. I’m not suggesting that we smash the machines: there may be other, subtler lessons to be learned, and actions to be taken.
I may be giving the impression that Merchant’s book is a dry academic story. It is anything but that. It’s an adventure story whose colorful characters include the likes of Lord Byron. I recommend it highly.
That said, of the many reasons to read Merchant’s book, I have focused here only on the most obvious: the correct understanding of Ludditism. I do so out of a concern for getting our terms and our facts right. Today we’re swimming against a torrent of disinformation that will only be amplified by artificial intelligence. And not only will AI magnify the disinformation we’re already dealing with, the information we’re getting about AI itself will in turn be subject to disinformation, hype, and hysteria.
So in the interest of doing my part, I’ll keep pointing to what I consider reliable sources on this technology, like the books by Kaplan, Hawkins, Wolfram, and Merchant that I’ve already recommended in this blog. And to online sources like those in my Blogroll below.
BEFORE YOU GO…
The Pragmatic Bookshelf: Charged Bodies
My day job is editing books for The Pragmatic Bookshelf, and one of the joys of that work is discovering a new author and introducing a new book to readers. But sometimes it’s re-introducing an old book that needs to be rediscovered.
In the early days of Silicon Valley’s rise, Tom Mahon did a series of interviews that captured the moment and its implications perhaps better than anyone else ever has. I was disappointed that his book, Charged Bodies, was out of print, and, convinced that it should be read by a modern audience, I helped Tom get it republished by The Pragmatic Bookshelf, with a new Afterword by Tom. It’s available now. Here’s the description:
“At the heart of Silicon Valley’s meteoric rise is a story etched in the lives of those who shaped it and those who were forever transformed by it. Author Tom Mahon provides an insider’s perspective on the birth of the semiconductor industry, which sparked the region’s transformation from sleepy farmland to the heart and soul of the high-tech revolution. Through twenty-five extended, in-person interviews you’ll meet a diverse cast of characters whose goal was to create technology and tools in service to humanity. In the Afterword to this edition, the author questions whether they accomplished their objectives and urges readers to rise up and rethink technology.
“What did it take to create the atmosphere that transformed rich farmland into the wealthy center of high-tech? Five climates lined up in just the right way. Educational institutions (Stanford and Berkeley); an attractive location with balmy, Mediterranean-like weather; a history of technology development (Federal Telegraph in the early twentieth century); financial risk taking (the gold rush); and a cultural climate near the center of an ideological revolution (the hippie movement). The Santa Clara Valley had them all. In spades.
“Before personal computers, or the Internet, or social media came chips. Inventive minds took advantage of the quad-electron structure and unique properties — insulative and conductive — of silicon to create semiconductors. But Charged Bodies is more than just the story of new technologies emerging from “The Valley of the Heart’s Delight.” Using an approach like The Canterbury Tales, Tom Mahon captures the spirit of Silicon Valley in the 80s through the stories of the people all around him. The inventors and bankers have their say. But so do a range of other people who lived through that transition. Listen as artists and hackers, detectives and journalists, lawyers and scientists, flappers and philosophers tell the story of Silicon Valley in their own words.”
Available now from The Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Blogroll
AI Supremacy
Ahead of AI
Mark Watson’s AI Books and Blog
Kent Beck’s advice for geeks
When We Were Trekkies
Tales from the Jar Side
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
Bookshop.org
New York Review of Books
Pragmatic Bookshelf
ICYMI
In past AI-related Book Week posts, I have recommended A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins and Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know by Jerry Kaplan. You can read all the back issues of Swaine’s World at my blog home.
Coming Attractions
Just more of the same: explorations in generative artificial intelligence, tech news, writing advice, book recommendations, and Dirt Road Diaries.
Thanks for your comments about the Luddites. I'd heard that before, but I really liked the way you included it here and hopefully someday I'll get a chance to read the book you recommended. I agree that the AI threat to jobs is not realistic yet (though many managers will make the mistake of thinking it is). It's really important, however, that we not dismiss the suffering of people whose jobs are displaced by technology.