[Brian Merchant’s new book, “Blood in the Machine,” argues
that Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the rights of
workers in the face of automation.]
[[link removed]]

RETHINKING THE LUDDITES IN THE AGE OF A.I.  
[[link removed]]


 

Kyle Chayka
September 26, 2023
The New Yorker
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed].]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Brian Merchant’s new book, “Blood in the Machine,” argues
that Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the rights of
workers in the face of automation. _

, Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker; Source
photographs from Getty

 

On December 15, 1811, the London _Statesman_ issued a warning about
the state of the stocking industry in Nottingham. Twenty thousand
textile workers had lost their jobs because of the incursion of
automated machinery. Knitting machines known as lace frames allowed
one employee to do the work of many without the skill set usually
required. In protest, the beleaguered workers had begun breaking into
factories to smash the machines. “Nine Hundred Lace Frames have been
broken,” the newspaper reported. In response, the government had
garrisoned six regiments of soldiers in the town, in a domestic
invasion that became a kind of slow-burning civil war of factory
owners, supported by the state, against workers. The article was
apocalyptic: “God only knows what will be the end of it; nothing but
ruin.”

The workers destroying the lace frames were the group who called
themselves Luddites, after Ned Ludd, a (likely fictional)
knitting-frame apprentice near Leicester who was said to have rebelled
against his boss by destroying a frame with a hammer. Today, the word
“Luddite” is used as an insult to anyone resistant to
technological innovation; it suggests ignoramuses, sticks in the mud,
obstacles to progress. But a new book by the journalist and author
Brian Merchant, titled “Blood in the Machine
[[link removed]],”
argues that Luddism stood not against technology per se but for the
rights of workers above the inequitable profitability of machines. The
book is a historical reconsideration of the movement and a gripping
narrative of political resistance told in short vignettes.

The hero of the story is George Mellor, a young laborer from
Huddersfield who worked as a so-called cropper, smoothing the raised
surface of rough cloth with shears. He observed the increasing
automation of the industry, concluded that it was unjust, and decided
to join the insurgent Luddite movement. A physically towering figure,
he organized his fellow-workers and led attacks on factories. One
factory owner who was targeted was William Horsfall, a local cloth
entrepreneur. Horsfall threatened to ride his horse through “Luddite
blood” in order to keep his profitable factories going, hiring
mercenaries and installing cannons to defend his machines. In the
background of the story, figures such as the ineffectual Prince
George, a sybaritic regent for his infirm father, George III, and Lord
Byron, the poet, who voiced his sympathy for the Luddites in
Parliament, debate which side to support: owners or workers. Byron
exhorted the workers in his poem “Song for the Luddites” to “die
fighting, or live free.”

Merchant ably demonstrates the dire stakes of the Luddites’ plight.
The trades that had sustained livelihoods for generations were
disappearing, and their families were starving. A Lancashire
weaver’s weekly pay dropped from twenty-five shillings in 1800 to
fourteen in 1811. The market was being flooded with cheaper, inferior
goods such as “cut-ups,” stockings made from two pieces of cloth
joined together, rather than knit as one continuous whole. The
government repeatedly failed to intervene on behalf of the workers.
What option remained was attacking the boss’s capital by disabling
the factories. The secretive captains of the Luddite forces took on
the pseudonym General Ludd or King Ludd, which they used to write
public letters and to sign threats of attacks. The spectre of violence
led some factory owners to abandon their plans for automation. They
reverted to manual labor or closed up shop completely. For a time, it
seemed that the Luddites were making headway in empowering themselves
over the machines.

The book offers plenty of satisfying imagery for the
twenty-first-century reader experiencing techlash. Merchant argues
that the message of Luddism is just as relevant today, as our lives
become increasingly enmeshed with digital platforms, from TikTok to
Uber and Instacart, that translate our labor and attention into
profit, “overlaying a sort of psychic factory onto its workers’
lives.” (Who hasn’t at times wished to take a hammer to their
MacBook?) The Luddites sought revenge against the innovation that was
holding them hostage. In Merchant’s telling, they were activists,
punks, and masked celebrities standing up for the skilled working
class, the successors to Robin Hood, another product of Nottingham.
“Luddite” by that measure sounds like a compliment.

“Blood in the Machine” is being published just as we are facing a
new wave of technological automation centering on artificial
intelligence
[[link removed]]—which
some, including the consulting firm McKinsey, have labelled the
“Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Merchant uses anachronistic terms
like “startup” and “tech titan” to describe early factories
and entrepreneurs, seeking to draw parallels with the present. (The
book’s analytical sections are weaker than its narrative ones.) The
“labor-saving technology” of today threatens new categories of
jobs: customer service is being performed by chatbots; Amazon is
selling e-books written by ChatGPT. Designers and illustrators are
losing jobs to image generators; translators are being asked to
“clean up” transcripts generated by A.I. The profusion of dubious
A.I.-generated content
[[link removed]] resembles
the badly made stockings of the nineteenth century. At the time of the
Luddites, many hoped the subpar products would prove unacceptable to
consumers or to the government. Instead, social norms adjusted. Both
the mass-manufactured products and the regimented jobs that produced
them quickly became entrenched.

The Luddites watched as sprawling factory buildings rose over their
rural towns, concentrating labor that had traditionally been performed
independently in the home or small workshops. The working conditions
in those factories, often staffed by children, were execrable; the
horror stories that emerged, of mangled limbs and bodies, eventually
helped encourage reform. The victims of automation today are less
immediately obvious. ChatGPT users can’t see the low-paid content
moderators in countries such as Kenya who undergird the program
[[link removed]]’s
output, performing an onerous psychological task that studies have
shown
[[link removed]] can
induce P.T.S.D. There is no single machine that can be smashed to
disable artificial intelligence. If the physical server farms that
host A.I. programs were attacked, the software could simply be hosted
elsewhere. What’s more, the foundation of A.I. is the raw material
that humanity has already labored to produce: reams of text and images
that programs process into patterns and then remix into fresh
“content.” Unlike the machines of the first Industrial Revolution,
A.I. does not necessarily need more input; it can sustain itself.
“Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop,” Sam Altman, the
C.E.O. of OpenAI, recently told _The Atlantic_
[[link removed]].

The tragedy of the Luddites is not the fact that they failed to stop
industrialization so much as the way in which they failed. In the end,
Parliament “sided decisively with the entrepreneurs,” as Merchant
writes, and frame-breaking was made a capital offense. Dozens of
workers were executed for Luddite activities, including, in January of
1813, fourteen in one brutal day. George Mellor, the Luddite captain,
was eventually convicted of assassinating Horsfall, the factory owner,
and was hanged, at the age of twenty-three. Human rebellion proved
inadequate against the pull of technological advancement.

“Blood in the Machine” suggests that although the forces of
mechanization can feel beyond our control, the way society responds to
such changes is not. Regulation of the textile industry could have
protected the Luddite workers before they resorted to destruction. One
proposal suggested a tax on every yard of cloth made by machine. After
a pro-worker bill failed to pass in the House of Lords, Gravener
Henson, a frame knitter turned advocate and historian, led an
association of workers that demanded higher wages and labor
protections, though such “combination” was outlawed at the time in
the U.K. Eventually, Luddism faded into a more general political
movement. By the late nineteenth century, the majority of
Nottingham’s lace production had been mechanized. In the era of
A.I., we have another opportunity to decide whether automation will
create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to
the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls.
One 1812 letter from the Luddites described their mission as fighting
against “all Machinery hurtful to Commonality.” That remains a
strong standard by which to judge technological gains. ♦

_Kyle Chayka [[link removed]] is
a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of “The Longing for
Less: Living with Minimalism
[[link removed]].”_

_Since its founding, in 1925, THE NEW YORKER has evolved from a
Manhattan-centric “fifteen-cent comic paper”—as its first
editor, Harold Ross, put it—to a multi-platform publication known
worldwide for its in-depth reporting, political and cultural
commentary, fiction, poetry, and humor. The weekly magazine is
complemented by newyorker.com [[link removed]], a daily
source of news and cultural coverage, plus an expansive audio
division, an award-winning film-and-television arm, and a range of
live events featuring people of note. Today, The New
Yorker continues to stand apart for its rigor, fairness, and
excellence, and for its singular mix of stories that surprise,
delight, and inform._

_The weekly magazine is available in print, at newsstands, and by
subscription [[link removed]]. Digital
subscribers have access to our complete archive, which includes a
digital replica of every issue of the print magazine, from 1925 to
today._

* Luddites
[[link removed]]
* workers
[[link removed]]
* Workers Fightback
[[link removed]]
* innovation
[[link removed]]
* artificial intelligence
[[link removed]]
* INDUSTRIALIZATION
[[link removed]]
* regulation
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed].]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]