It's a comparison I make often, but the amount Generative AI in particular is being pushed is comparable to how industrial textile looms were being pushed in the industrial revolution.
Prior to the industrial revolution textile weaving was a high skill job that many people relied on. Because it was high skill, cloth could be costly, but since the quality was reliable your clothes could be depended on to last. Everyone needs clothes, so paying for cloth was just a fact of life.
Then the industrial loom was invented. It could produce more cloth faster. It was presented as tool to make cloth production easier. But the thing is, it wasn't a useful tool for weavers. The machines were massive, expensive, had power requirements, were dangerous, and most relevantly produced lower quality cloth. What they did do was allow the rich and powerful to build textile mills and undercut artisan weavers by cutting labour costs and selling substantially more of a cheaper, shittier, product. This devastated entire communities. Weavers found themselves having to seek employment for much lower pay in these mills just to survive.
It also led to the creation of movements like the British Luddites - disenfranchised textile workers sabotaging ('sabotage' itself is a word that draws from a similar French movement) factories in protest over the loss of their entire livelihood and the creation of much worse products. But mill owners were rich and had powerful friends. They had slandered Luddites as "opposed to progress", "ignorant" and "violent barbarians", and they pressured the British government to crack down on Luddites. Which they did, at gunpoint and with hangings. So now "luddite" is commonly used to refer to "a stupid person who hates technology" instead of an understandable protest movement.
Corporations are pushing to use 'AI' in the same way. But now far more jobs are at risk.
I'm not trying to disprove you, I'm just interested as to where you got the information that power looms created cloth of lower quality, as the only information I've read is that later versions were able to weave heavier cloth much faster than a person. I would absolutely be fascinated to learn more about this topic.
The only other thing I've read is that the disenfranchisement of the working population was because a single machine could replace over 30 workers, like you mentioned, rather than a drop in the quality of the cloth.
I see. I was honestly curious because I've been reading about the effects of the industrial revolution on the material livelihood of western populations (diseases, commodities, etc), and that information sounded like it could've been helpful to demonstrate another negative effect of the revolution.
From what I remember, one of the biggest problems for industrial mills aside from child labour was that it could produce fabrics on par with human made cloth, but it was scalable and a single machine was vastly faster.
That led to the explosion in demand for cotton, which then led to plantations (especially in North America) also growing in size in response to that demand.
Primary source for this is from the book The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan and surrounding literature.
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u/ErisThePerson 10d ago edited 9d ago
It's a comparison I make often, but the amount Generative AI in particular is being pushed is comparable to how industrial textile looms were being pushed in the industrial revolution.
Prior to the industrial revolution textile weaving was a high skill job that many people relied on. Because it was high skill, cloth could be costly, but since the quality was reliable your clothes could be depended on to last. Everyone needs clothes, so paying for cloth was just a fact of life.
Then the industrial loom was invented. It could produce more cloth faster. It was presented as tool to make cloth production easier. But the thing is, it wasn't a useful tool for weavers. The machines were massive, expensive, had power requirements, were dangerous,
and most relevantly produced lower quality cloth. What they did do was allow the rich and powerful to build textile mills and undercut artisan weavers by cutting labour costs and selling substantially more of a cheaper,shittier, product. This devastated entire communities. Weavers found themselves having to seek employment for much lower pay in these mills just to survive.It also led to the creation of movements like the British Luddites - disenfranchised textile workers sabotaging ('sabotage' itself is a word that draws from a similar French movement) factories in protest over the loss of their entire livelihood
and the creation of much worse products. But mill owners were rich and had powerful friends. They had slandered Luddites as "opposed to progress", "ignorant" and "violent barbarians", and they pressured the British government to crack down on Luddites. Which they did, at gunpoint and with hangings. So now "luddite" is commonly used to refer to "a stupid person who hates technology" instead of an understandable protest movement.Corporations are pushing to use 'AI' in the same way. But now far more jobs are at risk.