They were not opposing automation. They were opposing loss of jobs, wages, dignity in work and all that. And they turned out to be completely right. AI is just the next attack from capitalism in a long line of attacks aimed at workers. And this time its coming for every single worker, given that the explicit purpose is to create AI that can replace every single person.

You think anything they did could've put the automation genie back in the bottle?

Barring massive violence against anyone even thinking about automating something, is there anything the could've done realistically?

We're at the same point with AI now, a bit worse really. People are using AI for _everything_ since it's practically free to shove it at any problem and get "meh" results.

Then they do the math whether "meh" basically for free is better than "decent to good" for a liveable wage.

With knitting machines there was an actual monetary and time cost to getting them running so the adoption was slower.

AI adoption is moving at crazy speeds with no regard for anything. Some of the uses will stick and people will lose jobs, some will be scaled back because "meh" quality isn't sustainable practice.

Boycotting products and companies that use AI in a stupid "meh" way will work eventually, but for some fields it's here to stay because it's just better. Programming is one of them, there's no going back to "stupid" Intellisense or plain tab complete when even a local AI model powered system can pre-fill whole functions with 80-100% accuracy in seconds.

The Luddites weren't against automation, they were retaliating against the capital class. Their demands were to have dignified work, not for automation to go away. They attacked the machines because it was the tool the capital class used to deny them their livelihood.

> AI is just the next attack from capitalism ...

Technology, not capitalism.

Not at all. This technology could be deployed in many ways. We have written about benefiting ways it could be deployed to help society for 80 years. It is Capitalism that has decided to deploy it in the worst ways thought up.

'Because something happened in the past when we were fairly undeveloped, when almost nothing in society had been approached systematically, that same thing will happen in the future where we have systematically optimized everything we can. And we should bet civilization on that. Somehow, magically, everything will work out. And if you don't agree with magic, don't want to bet society on hopes of some magic solution appearing, you are the one denying reality and fighting progress'.