Newton-Rex, Ed. (2024, July 27). Robots sacked, screenings shut down: a new movement of luddites is rising up against AI. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/27/harm-ai-artificial-intelligence-backlash-human-labour.

This article is good because it lists carefully the best reasons people are opposed to AI, and it lists carefully the different places the new Luddite movement is taking hold. When they put cones on the driverless taxis, that's a pretty clear protest, isn't it?

The one thing I'll say about the new Luddite movement is that it's got wide support. I say this as a writer, a retired professional ESL teacher most of whose friends are very similar - the people I know are almost universally hostile toward AI. And it doesn't get any more generous as people know less about it. We can all sense that it's taking jobs away, and taking the soul out of the world we live in.

What has saved us so far is the law(?) that one must disclose when one is using AI. I'm not sure it's even a law, but it seems to be a standard expectation. The people who do use it, and disclose it, find themselves the target of hostility and open rejection. People don't want it.

One other thing I liked about the article was the recognition that modern Luddites, as well as the original ones, don't want elimination of the new technology so much as they simply want to be included in the discussion of how and when it's used. Is that too much to ask? We know coming into this that the new tech will railroad all the existing systems if left unchecked; we'll be doomed. I'm already feeling like half of what I read is soulless; on the other end it doesn't care who I am. I heartily prefer a writer who is talking to me. Is that so unusual?

I consider myself a new Luddite, if that's how it's defined. I'm just in favor of our at least trying to find out what we will lose in the process. If you really know what you'll lose, and do it anyway, then it's like marriage, in my opinion. For better or worse.

AI takes over

A few writer friends of mine are upset that AI is taking over literally everything. They point out that whenever a grocery store puts in self-checkout, someone loses their job. Writers then are endangered too, because so many things are just being written by AI these days.

The obvious solution is to have a kind of revolution where everyone, led by the writers, refuse to accept AI in a kind of Luddite way and demand that only real people be allowed to write stories or copy for a survey or tourist brochure. The last one of these was actually the Luddite movement, where workers protested machines taking over their apparel factory and destroyed some of the machines. This isn't going to happen with AI, and in fact, I see AI taking over gradually and insidiously for a while with no one even noticing it except a few out-of-work writers. Why wring your hands over a change that is inevitable? I say inevitable because as long as these programs are out there there will be people who ue them to make their lives easier or more to the point to have a competitive advantage over some other schmucks who are over there in the corner writing their own copy. The programs are free as I write; I could use AI to fill this blog (hey, that's an idea) and generate thousands of key words while it's at it, ensuring that the world comes to my doorstep.

The point of this blog is not so much that we should start a revolution that will prevent innovation from taking over, but rather, that these change come with this kind of inevitable predestiny and the whole culture adopts the changes without really thinking about what possible consequences there might be. We not only don't identify them, we don't even question them, we make no effort to discern what skills we humans are losing in the process, and there is no group in place to even look at the process and do something about what might be lost. It is like going blindly into a marriage.

I read an article that said that grocery stores are walking back on their innovation of self-checkout because it is costing them too much money. People steal, often inadvertantly, and it costs them just as many store employees to watch you do it yourself as it used to take to do it for you. The stores invested thousands in the machines and now will have to start over. Well, I could have told them that having me do it would lead to and individualized disaster whereby I make mistakes left and right and who even knows? It was their mistake and now they have to pay. And this may play out all over and with other machines as well. They aren't always all roses.

Don't look to me for expertise in what happens when soulless communication floods the market until everyone assumes all writing is soulless or done by machines. To some degree there may be a walkback like the grocery stores are experiencing, but in general innovation is inevitable and will not be questioned by anyone except a few remote souls like me and a few very angry unemployed writers like my friends. It'll just happen and that will be it. Certain human skills will be lost like the ability to add large figures or the ability to memorize long stories like the Iliad (one result of the innovation of printing). Things get lost. People move on. They may look back at this little window of time and say, people could have stopped it, but nobody even thought of it.

Keep up with ChatGPT

The first four or five paragraphs of this article I found hilarious:

Mahdawi, Arwa. (2024, Jan. 12). What is Going on with ChatGPT? The Gueardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/12/chatgpt-problems-lazy.

Still processing it. I may comment later.