The 21st century Luddite movement is motivated by concerns about the impact of technology on labor and society, rather than a rejection of progress or technology itself.

These concerns include the potential for job loss, exploitation of workers, and negative consequences for the environment.

Some individuals may prefer to disconnect from constant technology and opt for simpler devices, driven by personal preference and comfort.

The original Luddite movement in 19th century England was a labor struggle, not an anti-technology movement, and was met with harsh state reaction and violence.

In the 21st century, the Luddite label is often applied to opponents of AI development and those who question the benefits of technological progress.

The movement is also driven by concerns about the impact of technology on democracy and the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech elites.

Many people are wary of new technology due to the fear of job loss and the potential for AI to displace human workers.

The automation economy and the increasing use of AI in industries are driving labor demands down and threatening the livelihoods of many workers.

Some experts argue that technology is making human contributions redundant, except for data, and that many people are becoming obsolete.

The Luddite movement in the 21st century is also motivated by a desire to resist the dehumanizing effects of technology and to prioritize human well-being and dignity.

The movement is not just about opposing technology, but about promoting a more equitable and just society, where technology serves the needs of people, not just corporations and elites.

To address the concerns of 21st century Luddites, leaders and managers must prioritize clear communication, transparency, and employee engagement.

They must also invest in training and development programs to help employees adapt to new technologies and address concerns about job security and privacy.

By finding a balance between the benefits of new technologies and the needs and concerns of their employees, leaders and managers can create a positive and supportive work environment that encourages employees to embrace new technologies.

Ultimately, the key to successful technology adoption is to prioritize the human element and address the concerns of employees who may be opposed to new technologies.

The 21st century Luddite movement is motivated by concerns about the impact of technology on labor and society, rather than a rejection of progress or technology itself.

Title:

Content: Brian Merchant, author: “Luddites are more dangerous to the rich than Robin Hood”

The Luddites have been a great historical resource. Any showy enemy of anything that looked like technological progress has been called a Luddite. Today with generative artificial intelligence and its critics, the word has been revived. The author and journalist Brian Merchant (Iowa City, USA, 1983) saw it coming and has written a book that reviews the Luddite revolt in England at the beginning of the 19th century and its similarities with current technologies: Blood in the Machine (Blood in the Machine, currently without a planned edition in Spanish) thus explores the origins of the current revolt against big technology.

Although the book has appeared in the midst of the AI hype, Merchant began his research a decade ago: “Uber was growing and it was beginning to be seen that it was having a hard impact on taxi drivers, I heard the term Luddite from the pro-Uber sector and wrote an article titled You don't understand anything about Luddites”. Now in his book he remembers that the Luddite revolt was a labor struggle, not anti-technology, at a time when unions were prohibited. In a conversation with EL PAÍS from his residence in Los Angeles, Merchant clarifies the historical impact of the Luddites and the possible similar struggles that are being played today in Silicon Valley.

1. The Luddites were not against progress

The labor revolt over the loss of rights was more important than the destruction of textile machines: “The biggest mistake about the Luddites is to say that they were against technology and progress,” says Merchant. “They were against certain technologies because they recognized the way in which they were going to be used in their context against them as workers. It was a labor movement, against poverty, not anti-technology. The British Government began to mold them in this way almost immediately, it was keen to mock the Luddites and present the argument that they were against progress. It is very similar to how today people in positions of power in technology companies accuse those who complain about poor working conditions. It's the same story for 200 years.”

The book quotes a phrase from historian Eric Hobsbawm that explains this stage: “It was collective bargaining through riots.” According to Merchant, this tactic in a workers' struggle was very powerful for two reasons: “First, it was symbolic because everyone understood that what they were destroying was not just a machine. It was also the specific machine used to transfer wealth from the workers to the employer. Second, it was useful because they destroyed the equipment that businessmen needed.”

2. Why Robin Hood is better accepted than Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd was a legendary character. No one knows for sure if he existed. It was the legend of a teenager who would have broken the first machines at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1811, rebellious workers used his legendary name to sign letters and further scare: “Ludd probably never existed. But the incarnation of it would become a mascot, an organizational tool, a wink: a powerful 19th-century meme,” Merchant writes.

See also  The Commander of the Land Forces meets in Muscat a number of Omani military leaders

Ludd lived near Nottingham (United Kingdom), like another legendary figure who has been better treated by history. There must be a reason, says Merchant: “The Luddites organized a popular and powerful rebellion. People wrote popular songs about them. They were like Robin Hood. But it is interesting that Robin Hood has endured as a positive light, while the Luddites have not. He suggests that the myth of Ned Ludd is in some ways more dangerous to the elites and the wealthy than that of Robin Hood, which is a little more nebulous and open. The Luddites say: go ahead and break the machines of your oppression. Robin Hood says: steal from the rich and give to the poor. “I think that’s a little more tolerable.”

3. How are they similar to today's problems?

The background of the book is that the history of the Luddites is similar to what happens today in Silicon Valley, where a small group of corporations dominate new technologies. “The way technologies are developed has basically not changed. You have a handful of people with access to enough capital or political influence to be able to build a factory and use automation technologies. “Back then, the most aggressive owners didn’t ask anyone how to find a way to make this a win-win.”

Merchant has received criticism for equating the great businessmen of 19th century England with 21st century America. But there are details that he does not see that far away: “The technology development process is in some ways even more undemocratic today than then. There is this immense pool of capital available to Silicon Valley innovators through venture capital. Uber wasn't profitable for 10 years, but they had access to that capital. Did anyone really like that? Did it work for workers and delivery people? Nothing mattered, they just had more money and moved on.”

See also  Just the mystery

These concerns include the potential for job loss, exploitation of workers, and negative consequences for the environment.

Title:

Content: Blog post

We cannot buy tomorrow — using stories to understand technology change

By Mark P. McDonald | December 03, 2021 | 0 Comments

tech NO logyPersonal ObservationHuman AbilityFuture of High TechDigital Society

The dynamic and accelerating rate of change, disruption, societal concerns, etc can make it difficult to see what it all means, the direction we are heading in.  Speculative fiction is one of the ways that people try to make sense out of what can appear to be senseless.  Gartner instituted a special project called “Stories from Planet B“.  The goal was to use stories and other artifacts to help stakeholders envision preferred and plausible futures in a way that is transformative, inspiring and disrupting.

Here is my story, you can find the others at “Stories from Planet B” on Gartner.com

Enjoy

Mark

YOU CANNOT BUY TOMORROW

Tara sat down, rubbing her leg to work out a cramp she had picked up on the walk from her house. She had delayed this to the last minute. “Can’t turn ten ‘till you talk to the old men,” her brother reminded her.

Tara cleared her throat. “Question: What was it like at the start?“

Response: Project 2207, Darius Senna, aged 105, recalling the founding of Pantos.

The front of the room darkened. “Tara. The name means star,” came a man’s voice from the darkness.

“Dad says it’s also a lubricant that has gone bad, ‘Tar — ahh!’”  The room got even darker.

“We call ourselves Pantos. The fifth wave of Planet B colonists, B5, like the vitamin,” the man’s voice continued.

Darius Senna walked out of the darkness. He was wearing a blue collarless shirt rolled up at the sleeves, dark pants and brown boots. Tara noticed his rough hands, and his face, lined from UV rays. A bench appeared. He sat down.

“We were not the first. The first were the explorers. They discovered Planet B, determined it could support life, and summoned us to our new home. Then came ships, filled with those who could afford to leave Earth behind.”

Senna leaned back. Tara noticed the old style comms implant on his wrist. “Six centuries ago, the English sent ships carrying goldsmiths, jewelers, governors and soldiers to Jamestown. They sought to civilize their ‘new world.’ Likewise, the first ships to Planet B carried engineers bankers, officials — the cream of a curdled civilization.”

Looking out the window, Darius continued: “Those first ships were technological marvels. Gossamer solar sails, filled with technology and terraforming equipment. They landed in the northern hemisphere of Planet B. When their technology failed, they starved, just like the colonists at Jamestown.”

He paused and looked at Tara. “After three more waves, some of them are still around, eating from waste regenerators, asking their tech why it doesn’t work. We don’t see them much. We think about them even less.” Darius leaned forward, clasping his hands, just like Tara’s father did when making a point. “We Pantos understand — the physical world feeds the digital world. When the physical does not work, the digital does not matter.”

“Old Earth technology changed in the early 21st century. It turned inward. It became obsessed with experience, entertainment and consumption.” His face hardened. “Before then, technology had made people’s lives better. Then society went digital, and consumption mattered more.”

Darius unclasped his hands. “Data replaced reason. People focused on themselves. Technology meant looking down at a screen, not up at the world around them. People thought it was wonderful. Screens made them feel better.”

He leaned back. Tara noticed the scar down the inside of his left arm. No one had scars anymore, not since the invention of Dermaplast. Darius saw her staring and, almost under his breath, said: “With their narrow datasets, myopic algorithms and self-centered beliefs, they couldn’t see what was really coming. And they never did.”

“I had just turned twenty-seven,” Darius said. He paused, lost in a memory.

He resumed, “We Pantos are not Luddites. We are some of the finest innovators and engineers humanity has ever known. Old Earth technologies were advanced, but consumptive. They were great for solving little problems. Distributing products instantaneously, keeping their users’ attention, showing each other how successful they were.”

“But when the big problems came, technology could not handle it. The heat, the drought, the pandemics, the inequalities, the authoritarian states. This was the world as it really was, not how it appeared online. Their technologies spent what resources they had, but could not create more. When their inherited wealth dried up, it all fell apart.”

“You know why we Pantos tell each other, ‘You can’t buy …”

“… Tomorrow,” Tara finished. She heard that at least ten times a month.

“Right,” Darius replied. “We say that when it’s time to get to work.”

“The ‘northerners’ brought Earth’s ethos of control and exploitation. Digital entertainment, not physical engagement. They binged on culture as they starved and froze to death. If you go up north you can see the graves of trillionaires, and screens looping videos demonstrating their importance.” Darius went silent.

Tara waited, unsure of what to do next. “If we are not the first, then when did we get here?”

Darius looked Tara directly in the face. “We came in the last wave. We came on outdated ships driven by ions. The ships were cannibalized once we landed on the southern hemisphere, far from the first four failures.”

He smiled, “The first waves came to Planet B in space limos. Pantos came in space beaters.”

“Pantos went to work. Our technology fits our hands, not our eyes. We built our homes, rather than having them printed. Building them ourselves proved we were here to stay. Doing things yourself teaches you the true costs and benefits of your actions.”

He paused for a moment, and said: “Tara, remember to feed the Briax when you get home.”

She knew. Doing builds ownership and responsibility; consuming builds nothing but your waistline.

Darius resumed: “Technology is part of our agency. Planet B sustains life, but we are building a world to ensure our minds stay broad; we think before we act. We make mistakes, like we did at Junction.”

He rubbed the inside of his left arm.

“Failure is acceptable when we learn from it. Unacceptable when it is a cost of doing business, or called an externality.”

“We stay strong, acknowledging challenges and celebrating progress. Technology encourages contribution, not consumption. Contribution brings meaning. Meaning motivates innovation and improvement. If it does not work for all of us, then it does not work well enough for any of us. We have much work to do. You know…”

“You can’t buy tomorrow,” Tara repeated, reflexively.

The room brightened. Senna was gone, as was the bench. A woman’s voice spoke up. “Congratulations, Tara. Welcome to your next decade.”

Tara stood up. As she was leaving, she thought she heard the woman say: “Another turning ten. A blessing.”

“Yes,” came Senna’s reply. “Old enough to understand, and young enough to care.”

Some individuals may prefer to disconnect from constant technology and opt for simpler devices, driven by personal preference and comfort.

Title:

Content: Andrew Luck Finally Upgrades His Flip Phone … To Another Flip Phone

Intro: Andrew Luck has made it clear that he’s not interested in joining the world of smartphones. He’s just fine with his flip phone, and he finally got an upgrade this week.

INDIANAPOLIS — Has Andrew Luck finally turned in his ancient flip phone for a smartphone?

No. No he has not.

But, he did get a new flip phone this week.

The Indianapolis Colts quarterback on Thursday shared on his Facebook account that his mobile carrier had hooked him up with a new phone.

In June, Luck became the recipient of the most lucrative contract in NFL history, and many wondered if the fifth-year Stanford product was going to splurge on the newest smartphone for himself.

"One, I like it. It's a comfort thing," Luck said of not giving up the flip phone lifestyle. "I think anybody can appreciate that, if you're used to that. … Two, I don't think I want to be connected 24/7, and this phone is maybe sort of a reminder that you don't have to be connected. And it's nice to get away. It's nice to turn your phone off."

Luck's phone at that time — and his new one, we assume — can send and receive text messages, and for all the newest crazes in apps and technology, he says he has an iPad.

"What else do you need?" Luck asked. "I'm not a Luddite."

Luddite | Ludd·ite | Noun: "One of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly :  one who is opposed to especially technological change." Thank you, Merriam Webster.

Nice word choice, Andrew. Looks like his "Andrew Luck Book Club" is paying huge dividends.

While many of us (including the author of this article) remain glued to their smartphones, Luck is obviously content with what's gotten him to this point in life.

Smartphone or flip phone — or rotary phone — he's back on the field and healthy for the Indianapolis Colts, and that's all that should matter to his fans and his organization.

This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Please use the Contact Us link in our site footer to report an issue.

Related Content

2023 Season Tickets On Sale Now!

Secure the best seats, benefits & more for next season! Be there live for exciting matchups against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and more opponents to be announced soon. Learn more today!

Advertising

The original Luddite movement in 19th century England was a labor struggle, not an anti-technology movement, and was met with harsh state reaction and violence.

Title:

Content: You will not miss us!
8,008 followers
Why robots will take your job, and what to do - panic or rejoice
Why robots will take away your profession.
Increasingly, you can hear about the challenges posed by automation and cybernization to existing professions today.
And we are talking not only about unmanned vehicles and chatbots replacing call center operators, but also about programs that can calculate bank loans and insurance rates, depriving analysts and, moreover, neural networks that claim to compete with highly qualified and creative employees.
Exemption from routine or danger of unemployment?
A cause for concern or long-awaited freedom?
History of the problem
Mechanisms of ancient times.
Competition has always existed – professions disappeared and arose, people fought for jobs with each other and with technology, philosophers and economists built forecasts and tried to predict the prospects and are still doing it.
For example, you can assess how much automation threatens your profession and how quickly robots will replace you by using Will Robots Take My Job.
Aristotle was the first to think about the possibility of transferring “work ” to machines.
In the first book of his Politics, he suggested that they could evolve to such an extent that the need for human labor would disappear.
For him, quite in line with the views of work at the time, as something distracting from participation in public life and personal development, this was an extremely optimistic forecast.
“Work ” in ancient Greece was considered to be the lot of the lower classes, and the mechanisms would only liberate slaves, considered nothing but“ machines of flesh and blood. ”
The reorientation of the economy to the export of wool led to the introduction of a policy of “enclosures ”.
The real competition of a sufficiently large mass of people technology for the first time was only more than a millennium and a half later in England.
At first, the reorientation of the economy to wool exports led to the introduction of a policy of “fencing ”, in which landlords expelled farmers from the fields in order to free the territory for sheep grazing, which led to the first massive surge of“ unemployment ” – albeit not in the current sense.
The then arising vagrancy and poverty contemporary of these events, the Chancellor of England and philosopher Thomas More described the famous "sheep ate people."
However, after a few decades it became clear that no – not eaten.
The former peasants were absorbed by the growing cities, where they found a new job in textile manufactures, processing the same wool obtained from shearing sheep.
This was the first example of how, by taking away one thing, “technology ” is able to offer something different.
But we must admit: the process of urbanization was painful, the work that replaced the cultivation of land turned out to be hard and dirty, the gap with the traditional way of life was very traumatic, and the population of England as a result of hunger and the fight against vagrancy, which was conducted, including the use of gallows, decreased, according to some estimates by 30% (to understand the scale - the Soviet Union during the Second World War lost "only" 15% of the population).
Workers in a textile factory, late 18th century.
The next episode of the confrontation between people and technology occurred a century later in the same field of light industry - the invention in 1785 by Edmund Cartwright of a mechanical loom increased labor productivity forty times.
Jobs that had just been lost were once again lost.
But again temporarily – after spinning machines, others appeared and all of them demanded new resources, and their extraction – new types of labor.
Manufactures were replaced by factories, and muscle strength by the power of steam obtained from coal.
Machine Destroyers
The Luddite movement.
This time, the changes that occurred were met with bayonets - there was a movement of Luddites.
Sabotage of work and direct action: attacks on factories and the destruction of machines caused a harsh reaction of the state, which sent troops to suppress the “army of Ned Ludd ”.
It is characteristic that no one at the top bothered to convey to the workers the idea that there will still be work for them, even if not the one to which they had time to get used.
The fact is that the “top ” themselves at that time did not think too much about how all this was arranged, and people were perceived as expendable material, while the inertia of consciousness of ordinary workers who had just recovered from the transition from the agrarian to the urban way of life was also very high.
The First Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 18th century.
The theoretical basis for the interaction of technological innovations and the masses of labor began to be summed up only by economists and philosophers of the middle of the XIX century.
They were the first to suggest that the disappearance of certain types of work in the process of technological development entails the emergence of new ones, and “work ” as a whole is not something final, which may be“ not enough ”.
The First Industrial Revolution was in full swing and the optimism of its apologists only grew stronger over time.
By the end of the century, it seemed that progress would eliminate not only social problems and contradictions, but could also rid humanity of wars.
However, while some spoke of the "Luddite delusion", others spoke of the "enslavement of the masses" and the need to hand over to the "factory workers", predicting that as long as the instruments of production are in the hands of the big proprietors, their employees will remain disenfranchised, and the lack of social security will cause explosions of unemployment at any moment.
Second wave
The Second Industrial Revolution.
The word “unemployment ” came into being at that time.
The fact is that a peasant working in the fields or a craftsman who provides for the needs of himself and the small surrounding community could not face something like this - he himself formed his employment.
When the scheme of selling labor on a strict schedule became mass within the framework of fulfilling a strictly regulated set of duties, the challenge arose to lose such an opportunity.
The Second Industrial Revolution was on the way.
The basics of streaming production were laid at the end of the 19th century, and by the beginning of the 20th century, the combination of Ford ’ s marketing strategy (he invented that the car was not an attribute of the elites, but a mass need) and the conveyor he introduced led to new changes that went beyond factories and factories.
On January 18, 1886, the first car invented by Karl Benz was released.
It was the emergence of technology on the streets of cities that brought a new wave of competition.
Look at the photos of the streets of the beginning of the last century: here they are dammed with carts, among which a lonely clumsy car is trying to maneuver, but ten years later, the only horse frightened by the roar of engines and sobbing of klaxons is clutching to the sidewalks.
Here it will be important to note how unpredictable this jump became: “At the beginning of the 20th century, the French Academy warned about an environmental disaster, which inevitably should lead to the accumulation of horse manure associated with the development of horse-drawn transport in Paris, ” recalls, reasoning about the prediction of the future Stanislav Lem.
However, note: in those regions where human labor is cheaper, technology can not replace it, as we are shown, for example, rickshaws, until recently used their own muscle power and only with a sharp drop in the cost of small vehicles motorized.
A more modern example is “computer rickshaws ” – hundreds of thousands of low-skilled Chinese, hacked captchas all day, because their work costs less than the introduction of scripts.
Technological unemployment
The line of the American unemployed during the Great Depression.
In the 1930s, Maynard Keynes, who gave the world the theory of the “social state ”, from the attempts of which many economies have not recovered so far, introduced the term“ technological unemployment ” into mass circulation.
Since then, the debate about whether the introduction of new technological solutions and opportunities can create a long-term job crisis or whether everything is limited to repurposing, when obsolete professions are replaced by new ones, and it is enough for people to change or improve their skills.
Until the end of the last decade, most experts were inclined to believe that “technological unemployment ” is always a temporary phenomenon, leading to the renewal and improvement of the professionalism of workers.
Mechanical labor was replaced by physical labor, the operator - a profession more status and highly paid than the worker, the reduction of costs leads to the release of time - these are the main theses sounded then.
Pessimistic views remained largely the domain of marginals, such as Theodore Kaczynski, famous for his terrorist struggle against progress under the name of Unabomber and primitive philosophers.
Pessimism
The first full-fledged computer in the USSR BESM-1.
Cautious voices expressing doubts about the correctness of this approach sounded even then.
And if in one of his speeches in 1962, President Kennedy said that “if people are able to invent new machines that take away their jobs, even more so are able to invent new jobs, ” then two years later, a letter from scientists and activists concerned with the problem of technological unemployment, sent to his successor, Lyndon Johnson, stated that“ a revolution in cybernetics will create a separate nation of poor, unskilled unemployed. ”.
Theorists disputed the impossibility of long-term unemployment, as did Martin Ford in the book “Light in the Tunnel: Automation, Acceleration of Technology and the Economy of the Future ” or Marshall Brains in“ Robotic Nation ”.
Gasne-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann, in their Global Trap, describe a society in which the labor of twenty percent of the population is enough for the world economy to continue to develop.
There are those who see it as a threat and a danger, like Paul Krugmann in his article “Sympathy for the Luddites ” or Frey and Osborne in“ The Future of Work. ”
In addition, in practice, it turned out that technology is not so freeing up time – for example, representatives of professions requiring high qualifications, at least in the United States today work more than 30 years ago, and technologies that provide remote access to working tools allow them not to break away from professional tasks and in their “free time ”.
It is also important that new jobs, as it was noticed at the beginning of the XXI century, are created not so much by technology as by the change in the way of life that they entail.
So in the mid-2010s, nine out of ten working people are employed in professions that did not exist a century earlier, but only 5% of the jobs that appeared from 1993 to 2013 are in high-tech areas, such as IT or telecom.
However, the question is whether this does not mean that indirectly they still arise due to technologies that provide an opportunity for development for the service sector.
Is it bad?
A shot from the film "I, Robot" (2004).
Harvard economics professor Lawrence Summers, who previously served as U.S. Treasury Secretary, said in 2014 that he no longer believes that automation will always create new jobs and that it is not some hypothetical possibility in the future; it is something that is emerging now.
In his opinion, the changes will be very global and will lead to mass unemployment not only among low-skilled employees, but also for “blue ” and“ white ” collar workers, because “there are many reasons to think that the software revolution will be even more significant than the agrarian one. ”
The robot prepares food.
However, this is what allows us to look to the future with optimism.
Summers ’ s thought of the meaning of the digital revolution echoes the position of futurologist Alvin Toffler.
As early as 1970, in his book Future Shock, he wrote that by comparing the Digital Revolution with the Industrial Revolution, we downplay its significance and it would be more correct to draw a parallel with the exit of mankind from caves and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and cattle breeding.
Potentially, this means that humanity is on the verge of an unprecedented, unknown written history civilizational leap of colossal proportions.
And, due to the fact that the speed of changes in the world has increased many times and now, the fact that in the case of the end of the Stone Age, took millennia, is being carried out in front of one, a maximum of a couple or three generations, this breakthrough, of course, will be painful.
However, having reviewed the usual way of life, the attitude to it and their values, will not humanity be able to break through to the conditions of life, previously even unimaginable.
"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991).
We are easily accustomed to such changes in “work ” as freelancing and remote work, quite calmly came to a repeated change of professions, instead of a continuous, decades-long“ career ” and even were able to include them in your life, saying that this is the way to find yourself.
So is it not time to begin to accustom ourselves to the idea that, as economic historian Robert Skidelsky said, “Sooner or later we will run out of work ”?
After all, freelancing and remote employment are about freedom, about leaving the “office slavery ” and searching for the way of life that is convenient for us.
Yes, to get used to the idea that the traditional “work ” is over and now we will have to independently invent what to occupy ourselves will not be easy.
It will require responsibility, but it is freedom.
Isn ’ t it time for us, joyfully exclaiming “Glory to the robots! ”, to go in search of our place in the new world?
Why robots will take away your profession.
The fact that it is not only about robots, but also about the “work ” itself and the possibility of life without it, about the risks associated with negative scenarios of confrontation between people and machines and the possibilities of overcoming them, we will talk in the next parts of the cycle.
source
If you liked this post, please share it with your friends:
And don't forget:
Subscribe to my Instagram
Link to the original source
Picture of the day
top

In the 21st century, the Luddite label is often applied to opponents of AI development and those who question the benefits of technological progress.

Title:

Content: The new is the old well forgotten.
Where in the Network there was a fashionable insult to the opponents of AI
In the Internet discourse, deep in the study of sarcastic comments of anonymous persons, you can find the term "Luddite".
This label is often referred to as people who dare to express the slightest inclination to inhibit the constant development of artificial intelligence (AI).
Related video
Interestingly, such prominent figures as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have been awarded the Luddite Award, which is recognition of their cautionary position regarding the potential dangers associated with artificial intelligence.
During the ceremony, Robert D. Atkinson, the organizer of the award, noted: “Unfortunately, luminaries such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have contributed to the feverish refraction of hands about the impending apocalypse of artificial intelligence, ” writes IFLScience.
In Focus.Technology appeared its own Telegram-channel.
Subscribe not to miss the latest and exciting news from the world of science!
Atkinson also explained: "Do we consider any of them personally Luddites?
No, of course not.
They are pioneers of science and technology.
But they and others have done a disservice to the public — and undoubtedly have helped and comforted the increasingly common neo-Luddist impulse in modern society — by demonizing AI in the popular imagination.
But how did the term come about?
Its roots can be traced back to the early 1800s in England.
Before the industrial revolution, skilled craftsmen who knew a lot about textile production made clothes using their own machines and specialized tools.
However, a situation arose when new technologies and methods of mass production appeared, as a result of which artisans were unable to compete.
The result was a movement whose purpose was the destruction of the textile industry and the destruction of new machines.
Although there is some truth to this story, it does not reflect the whole essence of the Luddite movement.
Their actions were not driven solely by a reaction to new technologies; rather, they were a response to the profound transformations taking place in their professional activities.
While it is true that they often attacked a knitting machine known as a stocking frame, as well as other mechanized fixtures, their main concern was the labor practices associated with these machines.
Kevin Binfield, editor of the Luddite and Compassionate Works, explained their motives: "They simply wanted machines to produce high-quality goods, and that these machines employed workers who had been trained and received fair wages.
It was their only concern. ”
The nickname "Luddites" comes from the nickname "Ned Ludd", an apocryphal figure who allegedly sabotaged a textile factory in 1779, although historical evidence suggests that this man was most likely a fictional one.
In a 2007 paper, researcher David Linton explained: “Some say that a young man, possibly with cognitive impairment, named Ned Ludd once misunderstood an order and accidentally broke his frame machine.
Others argue that this was done deliberately, in a fit of anger.
Whatever the motive, it seems to have become a joke phrase that whenever the machine breaks, for whatever reason, you can say something like, "Ludd must have been here."
From this construction, it is a short step to the ironic application of the name Ludd to vandalism for political purposes. "
Between 1811 and 1816, the Luddite movement held sporadic and somewhat unorganized protests, characterized by the destruction of cars and the burning of factories.
In response, the mill owners resorted to extreme measures, using deadly force against the Luddites.
In April 1812, there was a grim turning point in Huddersfield, where at least four people died at the hands of the mill owners.
In retaliation, the Luddites killed the owner of the mill, William Horsfall, who boldly declared his intention to "smear himself with Luddite blood to the saddles."
Horsfall was shot while sitting on his horse.
Faced with these uprisings, the government immediately sent thousands of soldiers to quell the protests.
Moreover, they adopted a law according to which the breakdown of cars was subject to the death penalty or sending to colonies.
Subsequently, the movement dissipated, but the stable expression "Luddite" could not accurately convey the ideals and goals of the Luddites.
Previously, Focus wrote about the first IPSO in the history of mankind.
It turns out that it was invented in Babylon and it concerns the Flood.

The movement is also driven by concerns about the impact of technology on democracy and the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech elites.

Title:

Content: Hey tech billionaires, if you want to talk about radical change, let’s abolish venture capitalism

 / Source: GuardianAus

The future that technology elites like to imagine looks remarkably similar to the one we’re in

‘Any meaningful, progressive – and dare I say, hopeful – view of the future of technology must be willing to engage with its politics, history and consequences.’‘Any meaningful, progressive – and dare I say, hopeful – view of the future of technology must be willing to engage with its politics, history and consequences.’Do you support sustainability, social responsibility, tech ethics, or trust and safety? Congratulations, you’re an enemy of progress.

Andreessen lambasts academia for being “disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences”. I have never read a more apt description of Big Tech.

So why should we give this manifesto any time of day? As the co-founder of one of the world’s biggest venture capital firms, Andreessen holds significant power. And he’s far from alone in his thinking – the manifesto offers a glimpse into the belief systems of many tech billionaires. Echoes can be heard of Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous former motto:Tech elites like to cast themselves as radical revolutionaries. But we find ourselves in a relentless cycle of sameness. headtopics.com

Concealed within the rhetoric of tech progress is preservation of the status quo. The future that tech elites imagine looks remarkably similar to the one we’re in: unchecked power, consolidated wealth, low regulation and minimal consequences when technology proves to be harmful. If we want to talk about

It serves tech billionaires well to make it seem as though social progress is intrinsically linked to tech development. They cast themselves as our; here to save humanity provided they retain the power, capital and market dominance to do so. Anyone who dares get in the way is dismissed as backwards or ignorant. This mischaracterisation goes at least as far back as the early 1800s and the Luddite uprising. headtopics.com

Then as now, when elites misrepresent techno-scepticism as dangerous or backwards, they are trying to direct attention away from rational concerns about manifestations of power and profit.The brand of optimism wielded by prominent tech industry figures weaponises hope for a better future. It asks us to shy away from the political realities of technology as it stands in favour of a libertarian fantasy (or nightmare).

Australia Headlines

Read more:GuardianAus »

Terrified of spiders? Let me change your mindOur distaste for spiders is based on ideas that have taken hold in society and are reinforced the more they circulate. Read more ⮕

Terrified of spiders? Let me change your mindOur distaste for spiders is based on ideas that have taken hold in society and are reinforced the more they circulate. Read more ⮕

Terrified of spiders? Let me change your mindOur distaste for spiders is based on ideas that have taken hold in society and are reinforced the more they circulate. Read more ⮕

Navis Capital’s Device Tech rules off $400m debt dealStreet Talk understands the $400 million was underwritten by Commonwealth Bank and Westpac last week. Read more ⮕

‘Dumb white dogs’: Melbourne bar sparks outrage for ‘abolish Israel’ signAn inner Melbourne bar has gone into damage control after being condemned over a sign placed out the front which called for Israel to be abolished. Read more ⮕

Super Saturdays and ‘HIT’ clinics to slash surgery waitlist backlogA radical blueprint proposes several measures in a bid to cut the number of people waiting in pain for surgery. Read more ⮕

Many people are wary of new technology due to the fear of job loss and the potential for AI to displace human workers.

Title:

Content: Many sci-fi movies have painted artificial intelligence (AI) to be an omen of humanity’s demise. The first cinematic appearance of AI was in a 1927 silent German film, “Metropolis.” Throughout the entire film, a humanlike robot had the sole intention of wreaking havoc throughout the city. Despite this initial negative depiction of AI, technology has been racing toward the development of advanced artificial intelligence. According to Forbes, “AI-focused companies raised $12 billion in 2017 alone.” In August of 2021, Elon Musk revealed that he has an aspiration to create a humanoid robot called the Tesla Bot to eliminate mundane tasks and to make the bots accessible to the public by next year. He went as far to say that the Tesla Bot could displace the labor force, rendering physical work a matter of choice. Twitter ran wild after hearing about Musk’s announcement, with many people drawing comparisons to “I, Robot,” “The Terminator” and other apocalyptic movies.

Humans have a tendency to be wary and fearful of new technology, as seen in the 19th-century Luddite movement when artisans destroyed textile machines to protect their own jobs. The fear of AI seems to be widespread, as people are unsure of what AI is capable of and the repercussions of implementing it. The reality is that AI is already implemented in multiple parts of our daily life — the introduction of the Tesla Bot is just a newer way. The threat of AI might not be the climactic, action-packed threat that we see in films. Instead, it could be a dependence on AI that threatens to lull us into complacency.

Elon Musk acknowledges that the creation of the Tesla Bot will have far-reaching impacts on the economy — an implication that is attached with all emerging AI technology. Currently, most AI can only complete the tasks they are programmed for, and since this doesn’t require true reasoning, they have earned the name of Narrow AI. The dream of AI is to transcend the limitations of Narrow AI and reach a state of autonomy where it can continuously adapt on its own with all the abilities of a human brain. This uncontrollable and irreversible state would be revered as AI “singularity.” Daron Acemoglu, an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that “firms that increase their AI adoption by 1 percent reduce their hiring by approximately 1 percent.” As industries try to find more ways to implement AI technology, there will be more and more displacement of workers. Amazon’s implementation of AI into grocery stores demonstrates their ability to completely eradicate cashiers while creating a more efficient way to go grocery shopping.

Acemoglu writes, “Some economists think fears of automation and AI displacing workers are overblown. They argue that as work becomes more AI-automated, the resulting productivity gains will spearhead labor demand in other parts of the economy … even in the same firms doing AI-driven automation.” The problem is the creation of AI itself — the automation economy drives labor demands down without any hope of reviving it. Even further, software developers GitHub and OpenAI have recently unveiled an AI pair programmer named Copilot to help provide coding suggestions based on what the programmer prompts the system. Even though the software is “still a work in progress” according to TechTalks, it will continue to become more reliable and efficient as more people use the technology. The unveiling of this particular AI shows that even the jobs of programming AI are not secure. AI is able to infiltrate every industry, and if AI is able to achieve singularity, even careers such as being an author or an artist are at risk of being replaced.

Attempting to prevent the rapid implementation of AI is almost impossible at this point. Many countries in the world are racing against each other in an attempt for AI dominance, trying to cultivate an environment for these companies to grow and flourish. The reason countries are invested in the evolution of AI is because it is revered as a strategic technology that could help countries get a tactical advantage over other countries and help strengthen governance. China is a great example of this, as it invested heavily into the AI industry while simultaneously implementing it into their infrastructure. Following the release of China’s three-step program to become a world leader in AI by 2030, they have planned to create a “$2.1 billion AI-focused technology research park,” according to Forbes. We can already see China implementing AI into the military and smart cities — during the Hong Kong protests, for example, the government implemented AI surveillance to identify citizens and subsequently curb protests.

Due to the importance of AI to government entities and many other industries, AI has cemented itself as an important factor to the success of new emerging firms. Trying to eradicate AI currently would actually impede the advancement of society as a whole. Though AI does pose a lot of threats such as the displacement of workers, built-in programmer biases and implications of AI in our political and economic system, the ability of an AI outweighs the risks. Its pure speed in utilizing huge reserves of information and executing action could change the way we live. It is dependent on developers and users as a whole to protect in the manner of how AI is utilized, perhaps through legislation or creating open source AI that is accessible to everyone. Then we could all access even a simple version of an AI that would also help our personal life.

One of the methods Elon Musk proposed in combating the displacement of workers would be to introduce a universal basic income. With the introduction of a universal basic income, we could lessen the strife of structural unemployment and shift toward a different type of societal model — one that bases itself less on a capitalistic work life and more of an emphasis on the humanities and the arts. Perhaps by allowing people to have more free time and less worries about their financial security, we could spur a new renaissance. We could fear AI and allow it to control our lives, or we could act before it becomes too powerful, using AI to benefit us as a society.

Akshay Ma Kumar is a senior majoring in economics.

The automation economy and the increasing use of AI in industries are driving labor demands down and threatening the livelihoods of many workers.

Some experts argue that technology is making human contributions redundant, except for data, and that many people are becoming obsolete.

Title:

Content: WEF Adviser Yuval Harari: ‘We Just Don’t Need the Vast Majority of the Population’ in Today’s World

Breitbart – by Robert Kraychik

Yuval Noah Harari, historian, futurist, and World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser, said, “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population” in the early 21st century given modern technologies’ rendering human labor economically and militarily “redundant.”

Harari’s remarks were made in an interview with Chris Anderson, the head of TED, published on Tuesday. He assessed widespread contemporary disillusionment among “common people” as being rooted in a fear of being “left behind” in a future run by “smart people.” Such fears are justified, he added, given his projection that emerging technologies will displace economic needs to many categories of existing work:

A lot of people sense that they are being left behind and left out of the story, even if their material conditions are still relatively good. In the 20th century, what was common to all the stories — the liberal, the fascist, the communist — is that the big heroes of the story were the common people, not necessarily all people, but if you lived, say, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, life was very grim, but when you looked at the propaganda posters on the walls that depicted the glorious future, you were there. You looked at the posters which showed steel workers and farmers in heroic poses, and it was obvious that this is the future.

Now, when people look at the posters on the walls, or listen to TED talks, they hear a lot of these these big ideas and big words about machine learning and genetic engineering and blockchain and globalization, and they are not there. They are no longer part of the story of the future, and I think that — again, this is a hypothesis — if I try to understand and to connect to the deep resentment of people, in many places around the world, part of what might be going there is people realize — and they’re correct in thinking that — that, ‘The future doesn’t need me. You have all these smart people in California and in New York and in Beijing, and they are planning this amazing future with artificial intelligence and bio-engineering and in global connectivity and whatnot, and they don’t need me. Maybe if they are nice, they will throw some crumbs my way like universal basic income,’ but it’s much worse psychologically to feel that you are useless than to feel that you are exploited.

Harari contrasted the 20th century with the 21st while forecasting what he said is the current century’s and future economies progressively diminishing need for human beings. He said:

If you go back to the middle of the 20th century — and it doesn’t matter if you’re in the United States with Roosevelt, or if you’re in Germany with Hitler, or even in the USSR with Stalin — and you think about building the future, then your building materials are those millions of people who are working hard in the factories, in the farms, the soldiers. You need them. You don’t have any kind of future without them.

“Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” he concluded, “because because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people.”

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/08/10/wef-adviser-yuval-harari-we-just-dont-need-the-vast-majority-of-the-population-in-todays-world/

The Luddite movement in the 21st century is also motivated by a desire to resist the dehumanizing effects of technology and to prioritize human well-being and dignity.

Title:

Content: Artificial Intelligence and the Curse of the Machine Gods

Image by Gertrūda Valasevičiūtė.

Sometime back in 2008 I was having a conversation with an FBI agent. This is not something I would normally care to do, but in this case it was a family member—my half-brother, who is fourteen years older than me. We didn’t grow up together and have never particularly liked each other, and his wife and I share an intense mutual loathing, but at the time I was making an effort to be more present in the lives of their two young daughters, my nieces.

We were sitting in the living room of their home in Simi Valley, where cops move so they don’t have to live in L.A. with real people. The tedious babble of a televised football game was droning in the background. Following a thread of conversation I’ve long since forgotten, we somehow got onto to the topic of theft and morality. My brother said to me—and this is an exact quote—Are you one of those people who thinks it’s wrong to steal from a mom & pop store, but it’s okay to steal from Wal-Mart because it’s a big corporation?

Sensing my time to shine, I replied as follows: in order for me to believe that it would be “stealing” to take something from Wal-Mart without paying for it, I would first have to believe that Wal-Mart is capable of owning something. I don’t.

He was immediately confused. I continued.

In my view, you must have consciousness and will in order to own something. Wal-Mart has neither of those things; it is a construct. It may have stores and employees, managers and board members, but essentially it’s a legal fiction—a synthetic entity. Wal-Mart really only exists on paper, and it’s only because of consensus social agreement—and fear of law enforcement—that it can be said to have any claim at all to its warehouses of tacky furniture and sweatshop clothing.

The “synthetic entity” part really got him; he froze like an old computer. I could almost hear the cogs of his mind grinding as he tried to process an idea that was completely alien to his worldview.

Thanks to certain rulings of the good ol’ Supreme Court, these synthetic entities have all of the “rights” of individual citizens, yet none of the liabilities… like mortality. There is not a single human servitor of Wal-Mart who is not replaceable, from the CEO to the door greeters. Like all employees of giant corporations, they’re basically wetware, serving the needs of a more or less immortal construct.

You may have figured out where I’m going with this: corporations are a form of artificial intelligence. I hate to be the one to break it to y’all, but our society was conquered by A.I. generations ago.

I call them machine gods; “gods,” because they’re fundamentally disembodied—they are primarily conceptual, like, say, Hermes. “Machines,” because they don’t have any actual will or consciousness—what they have is programming; they take objects and convert them into money, which is essentially the same thing as saying they convert objects into power. The objects themselves are created by transforming the living—trees, livestock, landscapes, sweatshop workers—into the dead.

A fun, old-fashioned occult word for such an entity is egregore.

Taking things from a mom & pop store would directly harm the livelihood of actual human beings, who have will and consciousness. That is simply not the case with Wal-Mart, or Target, or Dollar General. These companies make billions of dollars in profit, most of which goes into the pockets of a handful of corporate executives who are already wealthy. If I could do so with impunity, I would take absolutely everything I ever wanted or needed from Wal-Mart—or any other chain store—without paying for any of it.

You know, sort of like European invaders did to Turtle Island.

That I refrain from shoplifting is not a moral stance at all, but a practical one based on fear of legal punishment. Also, my finances are solid enough that I don’t need to take stuff from the machine gods without paying; unlike many people in this country, I can afford the basics of life. There’s no good reason for me to risk a larceny case. But if my situation were to change, I certainly wouldn’t feel any pangs of fucking guilt for helping myself to the shit at Wal-Mart.

And so, my brother’s attempt to trap me with his simplistic, pseudo-Christian moral conundrum failed utterly. After wearing out his cop-mind for a few minutes trying to find an angle from whence to undermine my argument, he finally landed on this: Well, where does the transition happen between a mom & pop store and Wal-Mart?

He really thought he got me with that one, but it’s clearly absurd; once it’s possible to purchase shares of a company on the stock market, we’re pretty well into machine god territory. Although technically they are both corporations, a tremendous gulf separates my local corner store from Wal-Mart. It’s like comparing a marble to Jupiter.

***

I would argue that the state, with its penchant not only for reproducing itself, but also for manufacturing humans who require a state, is also a form of artificial intelligence.

***

Since the industrial revolution, or at least since the advent of advertising and P.R. firms, every time some fancy new technology comes around there are always True Believers—the people who can’t wait to tell you How Much Better Life Will Be Now. This fable is still popular after two centuries of revealing itself as a lie—the most significant accomplishments of most new technology are: killing more of the planet, impoverishing the working class, and consolidating wealth & control.

If you were connected to the last smoldering remnants of the counterculture in the mid ‘90s, then you might remember how everyone was convinced that the internet was going to Liberate Democracy or whatever. Anyone who’d studied Marx for two seconds should have easily predicted that the ability to buy everything online was just going to put a lot of moms & pops out of business. But could they have predicted QAnon? Hmm…

A few of the early dick-riders of cybertech, like Douglas Rushkoff, have repented of their foolish technophilia… now that it’s too late. Who knows what world we might now live in if liberals and leftists would have immediately recognized the internet as a force of evil? Actually, nevermind; they probably couldn’t have stopped it. By that point the beast was coming whether we wanted it or not.

However, I do not believe that our techno-dystopia was historically inevitable.

Back in May, author Thomas Knapp made a statement in a piece for Counterpunch that I feel is worth quoting at length before I carve it up with the Wu Tang sword:

We’ve been hurtling toward the “singularity” for at least 3.3 million years, ever since one of our ancestor hominins (probably Australopithecus or Kenyanthropus) started using tools to make their work easier.

Over those millions of years, we’ve continuously improved our tools … and our tools have continuously improved us. We’re not really the same animal we were before the automobile, let alone before the wheel. We can do things our grandparents, and those hominins, never dreamed of.

Once we started developing tools that could crack nuts better than us, speak across greater distances than us, travel faster than us, etc., it was inevitable that we’d eventually develop tools which could think better than us.”

With as much respect as is due to anyone who has just insulted their entire species, I have to say this is a gold-medal contender for the stupidest shit I’ve heard all year. I have an appreciation for healthy cynicism, but damn; this kind of Original Sin nonsense chafes my chonies.

First of all, the industrial foundation that made computer tech possible is only a couple of centuries old; go ahead and take a second to boot up your calculator, then divide 200 by 3.3 million and see what kind of ratio you get. I’d hardly describe the speed of that species-journey as “hurtling.” It looks more to me like being healthy for a hundred years, then getting total-body cancer for a fraction of a second before dropping dead.

Second, there was never anything “inevitable” about A.I., the internet, computers, industry, or even civilization. Civilization has only been around for about 5,000 years (divide that by 3.3 million; you’ll get a bigger number but not by much), and as James C. Scott examined in Against the Grain, the earliest hierarchical states were extremely fragile for any number of reasons. There was no guarantee that this way of organizing society would last as long as it has… and it probably won’t last much longer.

The industrial revolution was not the inevitable result of humans being “tool users”—a lot of other species make and use tools—it was the specific product of a specific culture in a specific region under specific circumstances. If the cosmic criminal Christopher Columbus had met a righteous end by drowning at sea before reaching Turtle Island—or, as in the short story I’m currently writing, been murdered by a coalition of time-traveling queers—it’s likely that the industrial revolution would never have happened. That means no capitalism, no planet-devouring corporations, and no motherfucking A.I.

Third, Knapp’s passage is really just a re-framing of the European “Enlightenment” myth of Progress™. The idea that factories and Skynet are part of the “natural evolution” of the human species is not only ridiculous, but it’s also a clandestine form of diet white supremacism—if the industrial revolution was a natural part of “our” evolution, and Europeans did it first, then clearly they must be more “advanced” than other people. Ergo, manifest some destiny, etc.

To commit what’s actually an enormous fuck-up and then claim it’s “natural” to the species is a phenomenal level of hubris… hubris that is basic to the social construction of whiteness. I’ve endured this crypto-racist horseshit in some form or another for my entire life, and I’m tired of it. I feel the same way about the “progress” myth that I feel about the Bering Strait Theory and White Jesus—I keep hoping it’ll retire to Debunked Land, but it never does. Since we can’t get rid of it, my only option for spiritual well-being is to mercilessly clown it.

These last few months, there have been a lot of people gnashing their teeth about the Dangers of A.I. Most of these folks have been enthusiastically feeding all of their personal data to tech companies for the last twenty years, and don’t see the relationship between the two things, but nevermind that.

I don’t see that there is any new danger from A.I. that isn’t already inherent in our cybernetic dystopia. Banal and soulless popular culture? Already got that. People relying on computers to do their thinking for them? Been common for years. Machines taking people’s jobs, or murdering them? Check. Planetary extinction? Well on our way. The “singularity” is just a secular repackaging of Judgment Day. It’s all hype.

That said, is resistance even possible?

I believe resistance is always possible… but only if you understand the threat. Over the years I’ve studied many social movements, particularly the more radical ones—labor rights, religious rebellions, anarchist insurrections, Black Power, Indigenous sovereignty, etc. One of the things all these movements have in common is that they grew from a world in which there was still such a thing as communities.

Many of the Black Panthers were organizing with neighbors whose families they’d known for two or three generations, sometimes longer. When was the last time you were in a neighborhood where everyone had known each other for that long? Gentrification is a helluva drug.

The gospels of Marxism and anarchism were spread in cafes. Nowadays, I’m ready to shed tears when I see strangers so much as strike up a conversation with each other at a cafe. Most people prefer interacting with a screen.

Our current state of hyper-alienation and total cybernetic mediation has effectively destroyed our communal relationships. Nobody like Malcolm X or Fred Hampton could ever have emerged from the world of smartphones and zuckerbook. Tech is the problem, and has been for a long time… yet people act like uncensored access to Twitter is the key to a functioning democracy.

What is to be done?

I don’t know. But I have an extra sledgehammer if you wanna play Luddite with me.

Malik Diamond is a hip hop artist, cartoonist, author, educator, and martial arts instructor. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is the descendant of kidnapped Africans, conquered Natives, and rural laborers of the Scots-Irish, Swiss, and German varieties. He currently lives in Oakland, California, with two brown humans and a white cat. E-mail: malikdiamond (at) hotmail (dot) com

The movement is not just about opposing technology, but about promoting a more equitable and just society, where technology serves the needs of people, not just corporations and elites.

To address the concerns of 21st century Luddites, leaders and managers must prioritize clear communication, transparency, and employee engagement.

Title:

Content: BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Three Change Management Priorities For Seamless GenAI Deployment

President & CTO at ContractPodAi.

There is no question that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is emerging as a powerful, transformative force in today’s business. In its 27th Annual Global CEO Survey, PwC looked at how GenAI would significantly change how organizations operate. They concluded the technology is "approaching a critical juncture, seemingly poised to transform business models, redefine work processes and overhaul entire industries."

In the next year, more than 50% of CEOs surveyed said they expect GenAI to "enhance their ability to build trust with stakeholders," while roughly 60% expect it to "improve product or service quality." Within the next three years, nearly 70% also anticipate that GenAI will "increase competition, drive changes to their business models and require new skills from their workforce." The lasting business impacts that CEOs expect from the technology include boosted efficiency and increased time-to-revenue.

Generative AI comes with a low barrier to entry, empowering organizations to start small and grow their usage of this technology over time. Because of this, I recommend starting with a particular use case and scaling it to the greater organization from there. The secret to the scaling process is for senior leaders to keep a close pulse on their change management efforts. After all, if your organization does not have a smooth adoption and implementation process and is neither aligned nor trained sufficiently around new technology, you'll likely fall short of reaping the full ROI from your digital investment moving forward.

Here are three change management strategies to keep in mind if you’re planning to embrace GenAI in your organization.

Taking A Phased Adoption Approach

Integrating AI into the day-to-day work of the organization necessitates a simple and seamless adoption process. To foster this digital transformation, senior leaders should consider a phased approach that sees AI deployed gradually and refine processes as needed. This gives employees time to familiarize themselves with the technology to maximize its benefits and minimize its disruption to the business.

Additionally, they can build a digital infrastructure characterized by robust digital resources, dedicated support teams and user feedback loops. All of this goes a long way in preventing the problems that typically arise in the adoption process.

Fostering A Culture Of Trust

Another change management strategy is mitigating organizational resistance around AI. This is achieved through clear and direct communication about the business objectives and expected outcomes of AI adoption, and an open discussion about the collaborative partnerships that can form between employees and the technology.

Transparency is key here. On top of establishing these lines of communication, senior leaders should ensure that AI solutions are designed with security, transparency and accountability measures in place. It’s also important for employees and customers to be assured that their data privacy will continue to be top of mind as the technology becomes further scaled to be used within day-to-day workstreams. Be sure to communicate that protocols and guidelines will evolve in the spirit of fostering an ethical and socially responsible AI culture. All of this translates to more support and buy-in across the enterprise.

Redesigning Career Paths And Skills

The advent of GenAI does not have to mean the disruption of traditional job roles but rather a redesign of professional skills and career paths. As AI is gradually integrated into everyday operations, employees should be taught new skills, allowing them to leverage the technology to its fullest.

Some examples of this include advanced training in applied AI, machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP). As AI scales to take on both repetitive and complex tasks, organizations should concentrate on bolstering employees' built-in business instincts and reinforcing their natural human skills. This involves nurturing areas such as business creativity along with strategic and critical analytical abilities and enhancing emotional intelligence within the workplace. This effort should be coupled with a special focus on fostering employees' continuous improvement.

At the end of the day, having a successful digital transformation journey calls for prioritizing the change management strategies mentioned above and exploring other best practices.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

Follow me on LinkedInCheck out my website

They must also invest in training and development programs to help employees adapt to new technologies and address concerns about job security and privacy.

Title:

Content: BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

6 Strategies To Alleviate Employees’ Fears Of AI In 2024

Following

The rise in AI has caused a mixture of excitement and fear as it becomes a standard part of our lives. Some say it’s a risk to civilization as we know it, while others insist it will transform the way we work, live and interact with one another. The part that is not debatable is that not only is AI not going away, it’s on the upswing. You can get that tattooed. So it’s important to develop a reasonable comfort around its use.

Is AI Coming For You Or To You?

One way to do that is to consider that AI is coming to you, not for you. The stigma and fear around the technology has caused some employees to shy away from a tool that can enhance productivity and certain mental health benefits like cognitive re-framing for anxiety. On the flip side, studies also show that workers who frequently use AI are at higher risk for burnout.

However, the opposite findings are reported in a new global survey from Sage. Out of over 1,000 HR leaders, 95% have experienced a workload increase over the last year, and 91% noted an increase in their responsibilities. Yet, instead of fearing AI usage, 77% of the respondents cite AI as having the potential to revolutionize their work processes by reducing time-consuming tasks and ultimately easing burnout.

Taylor Blake, senior vice president of new initiatives at Degreed, told me by email that there’s a lot of fear about AI, but avoiding the technology won’t make the risks go away. He explains that employees need to know what the AI tools are capable of, and they need to be experimenting. He also said that many companies want their employees to adopt this technology, adding that many workers are left wondering if AI will take their jobs in the next two years and what this means for their careers.

How Companies Can Help Assuage AI Fears

Mismanaged fear is responsible for most poor communication in organizations. It’s important that business leaders consider the psychological safety of their employees and how their mental health impacts the company’s bottom line.

The human mind is like Velcro for negativity and Teflon for positivity. Work-life’s inevitable uncertainties instantly arouse our fight-or-flight reaction. Our survival brain is constantly updating our world, making judgments about what's safe and what isn't. It will do almost anything for the sake of certainty because we’re hardwired to overestimate threats and underestimate your ability to handle them. Here is where business leaders can step in and offer a helping hand, according to the experts.

“Some companies are going all in on AI, wanting their employees to start adopting this technology, leaving employees wondering if AI will take their jobs in two years and what this means for their careers,” Blake says, adding that in this new reality, companies should be helping their employees navigate where they can best apply their skills and develop new ones simultaneously. “Many of us have the mindset that learning is something we do early in our careers, but we need to shift that to a mindset of being lifelong learners. Learning is the new competitive advantage in today’s AI-powered job market.”

According to Rick Hammell, founder and CEO of Helios, leaders play a crucial role in alleviating employees' fears of AI. He shared with me six strategies companies can implement to mitigate fear and misunderstanding

  1. Providing comprehensive education and training programs. By offering employees a deeper understanding of AI technologies, their benefits and limitations, Hammell suggests that leaders can demystify AI and address misconceptions that often fuel fear and uncertainty.
  2. Fostering open communication within the organization. Hammell believes that creating a culture where employees feel comfortable expressing their concerns about AI allows leaders to actively listen to these fears and address them with empathy and clarity.
  3. Emphasizing the concept of human-machine collaboration. Hammell advocates highlighting how AI can complement and enhance employees' skills and productivity rather than replace them. He insists that this will enable leaders to help employees see AI as a tool that can improve their work experiences.
  4. Establishing clear ethical guidelines and policies for the use of AI in the workplace. Hammell sees this as crucial in addressing common fears related to AI. He acknowledges that employees often worry about job loss, privacy concerns, skill obsolescence, bias and discrimination and a lack of control when it comes to AI. To assuage these fears, he advises that leaders reassure employees about job security by emphasizing that AI is meant to augment their work, not replace it entirely.
  5. Implementing robust data protection measures and transparent data handling practices can help address privacy concerns. Hammell recommends offering upskilling and reskilling programs to help employees adapt to the changing skill requirements in the age of AI to alleviate fears related to skill obsolescence.
  6. Promoting diversity and inclusion in AI development and deployment. Hammell argues that it is essential to address concerns about bias and discrimination. “By involving employees in the design and implementation of AI systems and providing opportunities for feedback, leaders can empower employees and help them feel more in control of AI processes,” he concludes.

A Final Wrap-Up

Companies are developing technology to help people feel more confident with the inevitable technology. A study by Genesys, for example, finds a consensus among most employees who say they don’t fear AI replacing their jobs. Only 10% of GenZ/millennials and seven percent of GenX/boomers worry about this in the long run. Instead, 23% of GenZ/millennials and 19% of GenX/boomers see its potential to make their jobs better. The study concluded that organizations should seize this opportunity to educate and train their employees on AI’s benefits.

Bill Salak, the CTO and COO of Brainly, is on a mission to ensure the country’s future workforce is well-educated and ready to wield AI properly. His company has validated its commitment to the future workforce with the launch of Test Prep, an AI-driven tool that builds good time management skills and bolsters their overall understanding of AI use. The new Brainly feature uses AI to generate personalized study experiences—boosting confidence and reducing anxiety.

The conflicting findings that are emerging around AI reflects our human inability to accept uncertainty. It shows that some workers have fear; others have appreciation, which raises the question, “Is AI a sword or a shield?” Too much or too little of anything can be harmful. In the final analysis, it’s how corporate America uses the technology to improve humanity that ultimately matters.

Follow me on TwitterCheck out my website or some of my other work here

Join The Conversation

Comments

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.

Read our community guidelines .

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's Terms of Service.  We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

  • False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
  • Spam
  • Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
  • Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
  • Content that otherwise violates our site's terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

  • Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
  • Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
  • Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
  • Actions that otherwise violate our site's terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

  • Stay on topic and share your insights
  • Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
  • ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
  • Protect your community.
  • Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's Terms of Service.

By finding a balance between the benefits of new technologies and the needs and concerns of their employees, leaders and managers can create a positive and supportive work environment that encourages employees to embrace new technologies.

Title:

Content: Although it is common for business leaders to take inspiration from successful sports coaches, former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger — himself a regular speaker on the corporate circuit — believes lessons from sport aren’t easily transferable to most organisations.

“Players have to be as close as possible to 100% of their potential to be efficient,” Wenger is quoted as saying. “That is not the case in daily life.”

Certainly, the role of talent separates sports teams from banks, or law firms, or even startups. Not least because the hierarchy of compensation is flipped, with many players earning in a week what their coach earns in a month, or what the club directors earn in a year. But Wenger is getting at something deeper, a point taken up by Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper.

“Sport isn’t a useful model for business,” Kuper writes. “Corporations are based on the concept of replaceability. [Employees] don’t need to be highly talented. They just need to be good enough.

A corporation succeeds thanks to efficient processes, not extraordinary talent. In most jobs, creativity and extraordinary talent only cause trouble.”

Interestingly, Kuper’s emphasis on process and replaceability chimes with common fears around AI and automation, with many digital transformation initiatives encountering resistance and scepticism from employees fearing job displacement — often justified.

Irish workers at risk

By 2030, management consultancy firm McKinsey predicts automation will impact at least 375 million jobs worldwide, while the recent OECD Skills Strategy Report notes Irish workers are at risk of falling behind as workplaces and technology evolve faster than skills and capabilities.

If we accept Kuper’s version of a corporation, surely more AI and automation will lead to increased organisational downsizing and even less emphasis on creativity and extraordinary talent.

Thankfully no. Or at least, not entirely. While the process-over-people organisation Kuper describes may have been common in the past — and still exists to an extent — IMI research shows top organisations have never been more committed to their people, with AI and automation an enhancer of their creativity rather than a replacement.

After studying the digital transformation efforts of multiple organisations, IMI found the biggest enabler of project success was not the technology itself, but the organisational and leadership structures.

Empowered by supportive leadership, agile and cross-functional teams utilised cutting-edge project management techniques to test and iterate in an environment of psychological safety, with creativity and innovation at the forefront.

Emphasis on continuous learning

The most successful teams were not necessarily AI or technology experts, but their organisations placed a strong emphasis on continuous learning and upskilling, allowing them to adapt more easily to new technology and ways of working.

Crucially, rather than being processed-obsessed, these teams were output-orientated, customer-centric focused on high performance. Tony Moroney, programme director for IMI’s digital leadership diploma and AI for C-Suite programme, believes the biggest challenge to be overcome when it comes to technology and digital is mindset.

When people hear digital transformation they tend to focus on the digital side rather than the transformation side, when really it’s just using digital tools to deliver this transformation and provide a better experience for customers.

"But it’s vital to look at digital transformation as a strategic imperative, and not just as a technology project.”

Recall the words of Colonel John Boyd, the US Air Force pilot and military strategist, who would routinely bark: “People, ideas, machines — in that order!” Boyd believed project success with technology came from the intersection between people and technology, and the ideas of those people, not from the technology itself. In other words, instilling a culture of innovation.

New opportunities and challenges

However, fostering that environment is not easy. The business landscape is being reshaped by automation and AI in unprecedented ways. This brings forth new opportunities and challenges for leaders, who are tasked with driving their organisations through technological adoption while meeting the changing needs of an evolving workforce.

Organisations must shift from technology infrastructure investment to value realisation, but these opportunities can only be realised when the cultural and organisational challenges are met.

For example, a recent Microsoft survey noted over half of Irish workers feel their leadership team is out of touch and that workplace culture has deteriorated in the hybrid environment. Burnout, not enough focus time, and too many tasks and meetings were also cited as challenges.

On the flipside, a recent Deloitte survey noted C-suite leaders found the main obstacle hindering their organisation’s progress towards digital transformation was lack of workforce skills and capabilities, followed by mindset and cultural shift.

In terms of overcoming these challenges, the adoption of digital solutions like AI should help organisation address the productivity pressure points mentioned above, reduce risk of employee burnout and improve the employee experience.

Crucially, leaders must encourage a culture of continuous learning and experimentation, where employees are empowered to embrace change and adapt to emerging tools and trends, along with equipping the workforce with new skills and capabilities. Otherwise, workers may get left behind, as the OECD recently warned.

While technology should be used to increase productivity rather than a means to replace people, technology can and often does replace people — this is the history of automation. Thus upskilling and lifelong learning initiatives are so vital: empowering and increasing the capabilities of a hugely diverse group of workers, including leaders themselves.

Jobs threat

Because automation and AI threaten jobs higher up the food chain than ever before, leaders are also at risk of being left behind, unless they equip themselves and their teams with the necessary skills and capabilities to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape.

The demand for a better understanding of these implications has led IMI to create their AI for C-suite half-day programme, featuring immersive workshops providing scenarios where senior leaders will work through the implications and challenges of embedding AI into their businesses.

The need for programmes such as these is especially crucial, considering the growing divide between workers and leaders in many organisations and the unprecedented complexity we face.

AI is likely to be the defining technology of our time, with the potential to free us from digital debt, fuel innovation and transform how organisations operate and interact with their employees. Rather than diminishing creativity and extraordinary talent, quite the opposite effect occurs. Freed from process obsession, workers can finally perform to the standard of high-level footballers.

At least in theory.

  • Ben Davern leads research and insights with IMI

More in this section

The Business Hub
Newsletter

News and analysis on business, money and jobs from Munster and beyond by our expert team of business writers.

Sign up
Lunchtime News
Newsletter

Keep up with the stories of the day with our lunchtime news wrap.

Sign up
Revoiced
Newsletter

Sign up to the best reads of the week from irishexaminer.com selected just for you.

Sign up
Cookie Policy Privacy Policy FAQ Help Contact Us Terms and Conditions

© Irish Examiner Ltd

Ultimately, the key to successful technology adoption is to prioritize the human element and address the concerns of employees who may be opposed to new technologies.

Title:

Content: Global News
The world today - what is impostor syndrome?
How does it affect 71% of company managers?
You're following the news. What is impostor syndrome?
How does it affect 71% of company managers?
From the World News section and now we leave you with the full details
SAHAD MOHAMMED, Abu Dhabi, Saturday 22 June 2024 03: 24 PM – Many employees can sometimes feel unsure of their abilities to keep up with the changes in their companies. This also applies to people at the top of the company ’ s ladder, who may not always feel confident or deserve their success.
This confirms the results of a recent Korn Ferry survey of nearly 400 executives, which found that as many as 71 percent of U.S. CEOs “suffer from fraudster syndrome. ”
Fraudster syndrome is an unjustified sense of doubt about personal abilities and achievements, despite strong evidence of success and competence.
People with this syndrome feel like cheaters or cheaters, and believe their successes are the result of luck or external circumstances rather than real effort and skills.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the long-standing challenges faced by top management executives, and even four years later, leaders are struggling to cope with the dramatic change it has brought to the workplace.
Executives are dealing with a lot of the basics, many of which have been spurred by the epidemic, most notably: the accelerating reliance on artificial intelligence and automation, the resistance of employees to return to the office, and the economic recession, according to Ferry Consulting CEO Mark Ariane.
In the past, CEOs may have faced one or two major changes in the business landscape during their tenure, but it wasn ’ t that much, and it never happened simultaneously, says Ariane, who believes that these simultaneous changes “create tremendous pressure on the person who leads the organization. ”
Some CEOs were waiting for a return to normalcy (after the coronavirus) that proved elusive amid stubbornly high inflation and an uncertain economic climate.
In addition to the double whammy of consumer anxiety and geopolitical pressure, driving an organization to success seems “almost impossible, ” Ariane says.
Wider challenges
The report notes that during the coronavirus epidemic, more CEOs were engaged in operational matters such as setting guidelines for working from home and redesigning offices to convince employees to come, explaining that the extra workload, as well as trying to keep up with the rapidly changing business landscape, has impacted leaders.
CEO turnover increased globally in the first quarter of 2024, with 51 CEOs leaving and 68 new appointments among companies listed on global stock indices such as the S & P 500, FTSE 100 and others, according to Russell Reynolds Associates, a leading consulting firm.
What the analysis refers to as “failed CEO appointments, ” or CEOs who lasted less than two years, accounted for 15 percent of outgoing CEOs in early 2024.
But in an interview with the site "Economy Dot Gulf", two economists considered that the changes imposed by AI in particular may be the most dangerous for executives, who have the burden of dealing with the new opportunities and challenges posed by these accelerating technologies, and keep pace with this development, which is happening very quickly.
Radical changes
For his part, economic researcher and business intelligence analyst, Yassin Ahmed, said in special statements to the site "Eqtisad.al-Khaleej", that the business sector witnessed radical and structural changes, especially from 2008 to the present for several reasons:
• The global financial crisis and its consequences.
• The Coronavirus pandemic, which has reshaped the rules of the business world and resulted in a host of challenges.
• Challenges posed by technology and artificial intelligence.
He added: “These challenges have complicated the task of managing companies for managers and CEOs, and this requires that they have the principle of flexibility recognized in companies, which has acquired great importance over time in the business world, but mainly refers to the ability of companies to operate in a world of volatility and challenges. ”
The economist talked about the fact that many officials and executives are struggling to absorb the range of variables that have occurred in the labor market, and some of them can not, stressing that among the most important of these variables is related to artificial intelligence and its capabilities, especially that "at the moment artificial intelligence has become a necessity in corporate governance, through which fraud can be detected, and thus improve the overall framework of corporate governance."
AI can be used to monitor the performance of executives, board members and various employees, enabling companies to better assess their performance and take action, and this may be a factor in the high resignation rate of many executives who question their ability to cope.
Ahmed touched on the expected results of enhancing the use of artificial intelligence in the management of companies, including:
• Growing concern about job losses, loss of privacy and security.
It is also biased towards one side at the expense of another.
• If AI is directly integrated into the business, it will result in employee abandonment.
• The possibility of the absence of social communication between managers and employees, which takes place in the business environment such as cooperation and solidarity between individuals.
• Promoting social isolation and its impact on communication between individuals and the difficulty of integrating into society.
More responsibilities!
In changing work environments such as these, CEOs face greater responsibilities, which are also linked to employees ’ expectations of the role these leaders can play as heard voices in society, and many of them carry additional burdens.
Increasingly, people expect business leaders to take public positions on thorny political and social issues.
In the United States, 70 percent of workers say they expect CEOs to take a public stance on immigration, and 74 percent expect them to talk about climate change, according to a 2022 Edelman poll of more than 1,000 people.
This comes at a time when companies and their executives have a long history of pressuring the government to influence legislation.
But during the epidemic, as trust in the media and government leaders faltered, Ariane notes that people began to turn to CEOs as authoritative leadership voices — a responsibility that not all CEOs feel comfortable with.
“People have lost a lot of trust in our government leaders, and to fill this void, they now look to CEOs as bearers of good values, culture and leadership, ” Ariane explains.
The most successful leaders are those who can quickly adapt to changing employee requirements and consumer behavior.
A changing environment
The Director of Al-Ghad Center for Strategic and Economic Studies, Sayed Khader, said in a special statement to "Eqtisad Dot Al-Khaleej" website:
• The digital transformation and the use of artificial intelligence are challenges facing companies, especially in developing countries, compared to the developed countries that have adapted these technologies to serve their objectives and develop the work environment in the companies operating in them.
In such a changing environment, many companies may have higher "quitting" rates because they are unable to keep up with the changes.
• This is accompanied by the disappearance of many jobs and positions that were known in companies in the coming period with the growth of the role of artificial intelligence, and this will also be followed by a set of new jobs that will reduce the idea of   dependence on the human element at the level of developed countries.
• At the level of developing countries, the use of modern working techniques and artificial intelligence will take time, given the dominance of traditional culture in these societies, which favors routine work methods and will not get rid of it overnight.
The economist stressed that this situation requires the need to develop the human element in various ways in order to adapt to the changes in the labor market, which does not prejudice the role of the individual in this system, which will be dominated by the digital nature, stressing that the use of these developments is now inevitable.
We hope that we have succeeded in conveying the full details of the news of what is impostor syndrome?
How does it affect 71% of company managers?
In God ’ s care and protection.
Advertisements
You may also read.