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Ted Underwood
@tedunderwood.com

Imagine you time travel back to 1847 and you find the left response to industrialization is a) machines will never be as good as human weavers or b) we need to copyright loom patterns or c) it’s a speculative bubble. You’d say “Y’all. Not helping. What you need is obviously a labor movement.”

Josef Grahn
@jgrahn.bsky.social

This has been confusing me since I joined Bluesky. The rational behavior would at the very least be to have some sort of game plan in case beliefs a and c prove to be false, and assign a minimum of credence to what domain experts are predicting.

Josef Grahn@jgrahn.bsky.social

It's especially perplexing when this comes from the left. Historically, socialism has been about reducing the burden of labour (shorter work week, more vacation, etc.). The prospect for accomplishing that has never been greater than it is now.

Ted Underwood
@tedunderwood.com

Yep. If this was an ordinary case of automation—not labeled “AI”—people would accept that it’s happening and move on to discuss effects, policy responses, etc. The “AI” label makes people feel the value of their sentience is undermined, which triggers denial, which prevents a pragmatic response.

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