This is the script from my national network radio tech segment
yesterday discussing public blowback to Big Tech abuses, with some
historical references and a look at how this topic could affect the
upcoming elections. As always there may have been minor wording
variations from this script as I presented this report live on air.
- - -
Some history: So back in the early 19th century, the term Luddite
appeared, relating to British factory workers upset about job losses
tied to automation in the factories. Around 1811 this led to a period
of initially peaceful protests that when largely ignored by management
led to threats to employers and actual attacks on equipment. So these
groups would often sign their demands with the name Ned Ludd, a
somewhat mystical Robin Hood type character, who likely never actually
existed. And so they began being referred to by newspapers and
authorities as Luddites.
Are there parallels to the ways that many people are responding to Big
Tech abuses today? Seems quite possible. In fact, various arrogant Big
Tech executives have apparently been referring to people protesting
data centers or other Big Tech intrusions on communities as Luddites,
or even notably contemptible terms such as "cave people". If you don't
go along with the Big Tech Billionaire's agendas, that's the kind of
response you can receive.
It might be grotesque data centers spewing air and noise pollution
24/7, using millions of gallons of water, hiking up electric rates for
local consumers, ruining beautiful rural areas. Or Waymo robotaxis
noisily clogging residential streets where they've chosen to park and
wait -- one of the reasons, along with throwing so many human drivers
out of work -- that Alphabet/Google's Waymo is facing increasing
pushback in their efforts to spread into new cities.
Then there's AIs spewing misinformation and AI chatbots reportedly
providing guidance to people -- often very young persons -- that may
help them in the commission of suicides or even murder -- with the
firms refusing to take any of the responsibility for actions that a
human in the same position would likely be thrown into prison for
committing.
Meanwhile, we have billionaires like Amazon's Jeff Bezos a few days
ago claiming that that there's no need to worry about AI causing job
losses -- he suggests that there will actually be labor shortages.
Perhaps true if enough people starve to death and can't get medical
care thanks to being replaced by AI. Remember last year when Amazon
proudly announced it was doing mass layoffs triggered by AI, and then
reversed in the face of public blowback and tried to claim that AI
actually had nothing to do with it? Yeah, sure.
And now we have new articles from the Harvard Business Review warning
that firms who rushed into writing their software code with AI are
frequently facing massive costs to redo shoddy AI-generated code, and
are dealing with eroded trust between colleagues, and degrading of
critical organizational, institutional knowledge. Not a surprise.
It also shouldn't surprise anyone that backlash to all of this Big
Tech AI Slop and related negative effects has rapidly turned into a
top level election year issue, with polled voters now putting these
concerns near or at the top of their voting agendas. And what's so
unique about this, and scaring so many politicians of both parties, is
that these concerns don't have any significant partisan skew. Just as
the number of those horrific data centers is split pretty evenly
between red and blue states, politicians in both parties have often
been boosters of this tech, sometimes seemingly in the pockets of Big
Tech, only to apparently be deeply startled when their constituents
began complaining that the politicians were on the wrong side of these
issues.
Constituents in many cases have been demanding recall votes, and in
some cases even escalating into more direct and potentially dangerous
actions, a situation that can't help but invoke reminders of the 19th
century Luddite Rebellion.
A big difference between now and 200 years ago is that ordinary people
are able to organize much more effectively today than they could back
then, ironically thanks to technology. And this shines a spotlight on
a fundamental truth of how the Big Tech firms have assumed that they
could push forever and never see any significant push back, so long as
they kept the politicians in both parties on their side.
Generally speaking, most people have been fairly accepting of many new
technologies: email, smartphones, and so on. For sure not everyone is
in love with them, but overall the benefits have largely been seen to
be worthwhile in key respects. But generative Large Language Model AI,
as being deployed by Big Tech appears to be the proverbial straw that
breaks the camel's back. Big Tech seems to believe that those persons
that they call Luddites and "cave people" will blindly swallow any
technology that the firms push out, and will believe anything the
firms' leaders say, no matter how obviously inaccurate those
statements are given what we all see every day in our own lives.
All this as job losses escalate and the Big Tech billionaires get ever
wealthier. Much of Big Tech is livid that communities have been
increasingly organizing to successfully block many hideous data center
projects. The upcoming midterms MAY provide an opportunity to give us
some idea of how long those Big Tech execs will be permitted to treat
us like fools, and perhaps we'll see how politicians in both parties
face voter concerns regarding these Big Tech issues. One way or
another, it's going to be fascinating to watch this all unfold.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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