The new Luddites, railing against the use of artificial intelligence

Recently, MIT Technology Review, the first of the American technology journals to originate from the prestigious Cambridge University, published a graphic novel on Luddism. Titled “What Luddites Can Teach Us About Resisting An Automated Future,” the narrative delves into two centuries of industrial innovation, exploring its darker ramifications on social inequality. Initially impacting the working class, these effects later extended to various intersectional minorities who are already paying a disproportionately high price for the advent of artificial intelligence. These include women, minority language groups, and non-Eurocentric populations. The contemporary relevance is striking: a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence.

Though often presented with a fantastical and softened narrative, the cultural clash prompted by AI has become both urgent and unavoidable. Why then, one may wonder, is the leading technology magazine in the world, published by the institution emblematic of the American industrial revolution, endorsing the romanticized folk rebellion of the outlaw hero Ned Lud?

The Luddites, workers of the early English Industrial Revolution, formed an underground resistance organization against industrial automation, often resorting to forms of material and symbolic violence against machines and their owners. In the United States, the concept of Luddism against the digital revolution emerged in 1984 when the prominent postmodern writer Thomas Pynchon questioned in the New York Times whether it was appropriate to champion their cause in light of the rise of personal computing. This notion has recently resurfaced with the publication of technology journalist Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine, which delves into the origins of the anti-technology rebellion that gained prominence in the collective consciousness at the turn of the millennium. Today, Luddism embodies a quest for a romantic, alternative identity to the quantitative rationalism prevalent in the digital environment. However, in this new context, the term has acquired a pejorative connotation and has become entangled in the polarization typical of the American culture wars.

Luddites encompass those who dare to critique ultra-technological capitalism and those who proudly embrace it, seeking a less numerical and more authentic way of life. As far back as 1829, the philosopher and historian Carlyle delineated this fundamental dualism: “Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.”

The Luddite rebellion coincided with the development of class consciousness among the emerging workforce. In this respect, the resurgence of the Luddite concept is highly relevant in today’s United States, where unions in the digital sphere are a recent and growing phenomenon. American writer Richard Conniff pondered in Smithsonian Magazine, “Is Luddism still possible today? Will ownership of the means of production, the goal of the Luddites, be accessible through open-source artificial intelligence systems, or will industrial concentration prevent it?”

As with many other crucial aspects of the changes brought about by AI, we cannot accurately predict today. Instability and social unrest are among the phenomena anticipated by those who study socio-political scenarios. Moreover, resistance to algorithmic domination may adopt an organizational logic more akin to rave parties than traditional protests. Recent attacks on street robots mirror forms of media sabotage observed on the Web in the early 2000s.

Will we instead see a widespread, quiet withdrawal, with more passive, non-confrontational forms of digital abstentionism? Or perhaps a resurgence of analog craftsmanship?

The latter scenario prompts us to expand our frame of reference to include the English Arts and Crafts movement led by William Morris. Revisiting the integration of aesthetics, production techniques, and social reform is intriguing: Arts and Crafts also advocated a much more humane organization.

New identities will be crucial in the coming years of change to contextualize AI and avoid repeating approaches that history has already proven to be limited or unsuccessful. Equally important is a deeper awareness of the socio-technical aspect of AI: How does work evolve? How will products change? And what are the implications for those directly involved in the work? Moreover, what are the side effects on the broader social system, now regulated by the recent European AI law?

From a European perspective, we believe it’s essential to extend the American discourse on Luddism to develop scenarios and critical analyses necessary to navigate today’s profound changes. Consider the emergence of disconnected identities, the rejection of algorithmic mediation, and the revaluation of handmade craftsmanship as a marker of authenticity. These themes resonate strongly with the philosophy of the late 19th-century English Arts and Crafts movement, which idealized craftsmanship and drew inspiration from medieval traditions.

In the United States, Frank Lloyd Wright adopted from the Arts and Crafts movement the ethos of social reform that design itself helped to materialize. But the English movement went beyond this by emphasizing nature as a primal life force capable of providing stability in an increasingly complex and technological world. It also argued that only the fusion of art and science could allow humanity to fully reap the benefits of industrial progress. In his famous lecture “The Art and Craft of the Machine,” delivered to the Arts and Crafts Society of Chicago in 1901, there was a pointed passage in its summary: “Echo is always a decadent phenomenon”. The mere return to craftsmanship could only be something retrograde and sterile, even elitist, in its effect on consumption.

Wright saw technology as a genuine facilitator of democracy, a perspective that today we might call techno-utopian because it lacks any judgment about the inherent inequality of automation and the many dark sides that superficial journalistic coverage tends to overlook as crucial issues requiring systemic public intervention.

If Frank Lloyd Wright transcended Arts and Crafts dogma in his efforts to encourage collaboration between artists and industrialists, perhaps we can draw from his experience and apply it to Europe by referring to the Deutscher Werkbund. Founded as an alliance between designers and manufacturers, this movement represented Germany’s efforts at the turn of the century to develop a conceptual framework capable of infusing art into industrial products in competition with the industrial dominance of the English-speaking world. In situations where creators risked exclusion from the production system, the solution was not to be found in protest movements, but rather in reestablishing a robust connection between humanistic values and technological progress. This meant reintegrating creative thinking into the fabric of corporations and their evolving production processes.

Indeed, a more integrated and functional response to industrialization becomes imperative as technology prompts us to rethink the creative direction of design. It’s about harnessing the positive aspects of machines without losing the necessary human elements. This is, in essence, the genesis of the industrial designer as we understand it today: an embodiment of design culture, capable of meeting the new challenges of design while maintaining coherence amidst the profound contradictions of the twentieth century. It’s about cultivating a pragmatic and inventive identity, free from the trappings of pessimism, nostalgia, detachment, and projection that threaten to leave us passively navigating the impending transition to exponential capitalism.

Opening image: The Leader of the Luddites, Illustration of Ned Ludd, 1812