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i think a core beef that i have with a lot of this "automation is bad" sentiment lately is that there is no inherent moral good in laboring the story of humanity is one of invention, where we improve our conditions by building things that help us do more things more easily

Absolutely. When folks tell me about how much more productive AI has made them, my conversation with them goes like this: "Oh that's great! I'm sure you've gotten a raise then right? No? Oh well at least you must not work as many hours now right? No? What's that? Your co-worker got laid off?"

As it happens, labour is currently the primary means of non-upper-class folks getting the money they need to live, so any automation which threatens labour directly threatens their way of life. In order for automation to thrive it's important to first establish better systems for sharing value

Sure—but the folks pushing this are capturing the value. Not the workers. This is the whole historical Luddite argument. It’s about political economy. Why push the tools that are going to further impoverish people who have to make a living through labor?

I think also negative externalities as well not being compensated for by those who are capturing that value e.g. xAI and Gas Turbines being turned on in black neighborhoods. I think it's good to be mad at that and the people making those decisions.

Degradation of quality matters, too. I see a lot of parallels to what happened with textiles. Yeah we got more "productive", but we went from a world where pieces of clothing routinely lasted an entire lifetime to fast fashion and disposable clothing that you're lucky to have last a year

On the flip side, I think programmers of the 2010s have been building too much “forever tech” that was really just a ship on top of a lower layer. Some tech can be disposable and while others need to be foundational. Making the disposable tech as easy to throw away as it was to create is important.

i think this romanticizes the past a bit. yes, there are issues with fast fashion, but clothing lasting a lifetime isn't inherently a good thing. clothing being more accessible does matter actually

gonna just fully lean into being a stereotypical leftist here: yinz claim to have read marx yet clearly haven't read marx or internalized the ideas within bsky.app/profile/segy...

Also the luddite movement smashed the machines in factories because they hated the *concept* of the factory and the exploitation factory labor inherently represented. They didn't _want_ to control the factories; they wanted to own their own labor and direct it as they pleased. Distributed capital.

I have seen some comparisons with luddites and people that have an extreme take on generative AI, but I'm interested where this comparison stops. Like the scale of how certain internet things impact people is not something that I've read about before, like social media and LLMs.

a thing i've been thinking about posting for a long time is "back in those days, the workers didn't say "eww factories were created by capitalists to enrich capitalists, we should abandon factories" they said "we should seize them and direct their output for the good of humanity"

I think the difference is despite the flaws it is easy to see how factories produce things that benefit people. A textile factory is going to make a blanket that keeps you warm, meat processing will keep you fed. Modern tech's benefits are niche

I understand where you're coming from, but I also think it's worth thinking about the fact that the split in tone here is along the lines of people who are currently financially stable and the people whose livelihoods are *presently* being eroded by these technologies with no upside in sight.

Then let’s go nationalize all the best LLM models. Please lead that campaign as one of the spokespeople making these tools

and i'm not the first to say this, but it is a grave mistake that folks want to cede an important technology to the right we fight for technology so that we can direct it towards good ends. we don't just let the other side take good tools because we don't like how they use those tools