If I hear another well-intentioned person justifying their support for the regulation of AI with the qualifier “I’m no luddite, but …” I’m going to start breaking my own machine.
Fromministerstounion leadersto progressives watching from the cheap seats,there is growing recognition that untrammelled development of this technology carries significant risks.
But there is also a reticence to be seen as being anti-technology lest we are perceived as standing in the way of the productivity boom and consequent bounty of abundance that the boosters of these tools promise is just around the corner. After all, we aren’t luddites.
The problem with being forced into this defensive mindset is that we misread the challenge at hand, which is not so much about the nature of the technology but the power dynamics driving this change.
This is where the luddites and their misunderstood resistances to the last big technological revolution, chronicled in Brian Merchant’s ripping yarnBlood in the Machine, may help us think through our current challenges.
Here’s the TLDR:in early 19th-century northern England, textile workers buck up against a new technology that automates their work and replaces well-paid skilled jobs with machines. When factory owners reject demands that the benefits of the new technology be shared, they gravitate around the avatar of young “Ned Ludd” and begin breaking the new machines and burning down said factories. The resistance rages for five years until the British government deploys troops and criminalises their association, leading many of the rebels to be executed or transported down under. Having been crushed by state power, the luddites become a punchline for anyone who can’t find the right wires for their laptop.
Maybe it’s the residual bloodlines of some of those transported luddites but, according toKPMG researchof 47 nations, Australians are in the bottom cohort when it comes to trusting AI systems. This is a trend picked up by the Guardian Essential report.
What’s interesting is that as more people have begun using large language models including ChatGPT and Google Gemini, their concern about the risks of the technology have actually increased.
The Digital Rights Watch founder, Lizzie O’Shea, refers to this dataset as a valuable national resource; it puts the onus on those proposing change to show that the risks have been mitigated.
These risks take two distinct forms. The first is the existential risks of a sentient mind controlling the world, fighting wars and playing god. The makers of AI like to keep the focus here because it (a) proves how powerful their machines are; and (b) it pushes the discussion of harms over the time horizon.
But the second set of risks is more immediate: that the tools (which are built on stolen information) are being shaped by the same big tech companies that have wreaked their destruction through social media with so little regard for the end user. Only this time it’s not the consumers but workers they have in their sights.
Over the past few weeks we have seen the bold prediction from Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, thathalf of all white-collar entry-level jobs are for the chopping block, while a study from MIThas foundthat the use of ChatGPTcan harm critical thinking abilities.
Yet our business leaders are sharpening their pencils, claiming that the technology offers such aproductivity bonanzathat the only thing we have to fear about AI is fear itself; while the ascendant tech industry isusing every tool in their arsenalto avoid the “constraint” of regulation.
This is where the treasurer’snewfound focus on productivityas a driver of national prosperity could have perverse consequences, particularly if it gets hijacked by tech and business interests that conflate head-cutting with working smarter.
Again, the majority of Australians are sceptical about the productivity mantra. When they hear that word they see cost-cutting rather than shared benefit.
These results show that if the government, business and the tech industry want us to embrace their future, they need treat us like the luddites we are.
It starts by tapping the thinking of the Nobel prize in economics winnersDaron Acemogluand Simon Johnson, and recognising that productivity comes from giving workers new tools, connections and markets. While the stocking frame and spinning jenny of the Industrial Revolution were crudely extractive, other innovations including the steam engine opened up opportunity and possibility that drove prosperity and innovation for the next 200 years.
They also should recognise that where the holders of new technology overreach, resistance will be ongoing. While the luddites may have been defeated, their movement gave way to the first worker guilds that successfully fought for the laws that civilised industrial capital.
Finally, they must accept that when power is genuinely shared the benefits accrue in ways that sometimes are not even imagined at the point of connection.
The last great productivity surge in Australia was the product of the accord struck between the Hawke-Keating governments and the Australian Council of Trade Unions, which helped to globalised the Australian economy while locking in social wage advances including Medicare and universal superannuation.
Likewise in this wave of change, the feedback loops between the makers and users of technology will ultimately create the value, so it only stands to reason those loops will be strongest when trust is high and benefits are shared.
Prof Nick Davis from the University of Technology Sydney’s Human Technology Institutedescribes the AI challengeas being like physiotherapy after surgery: “It only delivers if you put in the effort, follow the program and work with experts who know which muscles to strengthen and when.”
Placing Australian workers at the centre of the AI revolution, with a right to guide the way it is used, the capacity to develop and enforce redlines and guardrails on an ongoing basis is not some gratuitous nod to union power, it is the hard-headed path to national prosperity.
Proudly embracing our inner luddite and demanding a seat at the table is the surest way of ensuring that this wave of technology delivers on its hype.
Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company that undertook research for Labor in the last election and conducts qualitative research for Guardian Australia. He is also the host of Per Capita’sBurning Platforms podcast