What should be highlighted more, though, isn't that people are losing jobs to AI because it's doing such a great job, but because companies have lowered the bar a lot on the quality of their products and services.
No. AI is not going to do a better job than a skilled worker. But companies are not interested in the skilled worker's skills now that they've understood they didn't have to offer a quality product.
I've done some reading on the 1800's Luddite movement and interestingly enough, that's exactly what it was about.
History has flanderized the Luddites as being anti-technology; but in reality, they were against cruddy wages, machines that produced legitimately inferior results, as well as exploitation of under-paid/unpaid children and minorities (to operate/repair those machines).
All amplified by the fact that none of the cost-cutting actually resulted in cheaper prices for consumers, all the while Napoleonic Wars and various world trade disputes at the time were making life more expensive than anyone of that era had ever seen...
Yeah the Luddites (or I might be thinking of the levelers) had a lot of ideas beyond “we don’t like the industrializing” but their opponents really went hard for the smear.
Because their uprisings presented a lot pf risk of repeating due to some of their more radical ideas.
I forget which ones but I recommend the History of England podcasts episodes on them.
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u/mtranda 25d ago
What should be highlighted more, though, isn't that people are losing jobs to AI because it's doing such a great job, but because companies have lowered the bar a lot on the quality of their products and services.
No. AI is not going to do a better job than a skilled worker. But companies are not interested in the skilled worker's skills now that they've understood they didn't have to offer a quality product.