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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

I think calling it "AI Luddism" would offend people who are opposed to generative AI a lot more than calling it "AI veganism" offends vegans.

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Why? The argument is very similar to the one that Luddites used: that the increased efficiency is harmful to artists

Try even hinting at calling them Luddites and see how they react!

So basically, they want to be called vegans, because that's a historically virtuous label, but not Luddites, because that's a historically maligned one? Even though they are literally not vegans, and literally are much closer to Luddites?

The argument is slightly different. This isn't about taking away a person's job. This is about eroding something that we as humans had previously thought was uniquely ours, intellectual creativity. The point of art was to express something by humans for other humans. The point was not to make a pretty picture, or a pleasant sounding song. When an AI does this it is and likely always will be a mere imitation of what art is supposed to be. The sad thing is that this imitation will be good enough and cheap enough that it will flood our daily lives. AI image and song generation will do what mobile did to computer games. Endless piles of low effort useless output and concepts distilled to the smallest possible set of features necessary for us to be suckered into purchasing them.

Is the argument of Luddism not also the erosion of transforming material things with your hands, something we also thought was uniquely human?

As more labor was automated, these exact arguments were made. It was thought that no machine could capture the beauty and skill of human craftsmen as creation was a fundamentally human task. It was thought to be "sad" that low-effort, mass-produced, standardized goods would be "good enough" to satisfy human needs, that there was some inextricable timeless beauty to human output that elevates over machine output. Time has shown us that machine output has become even more precise and skillful than human labor. These arguments feel almost 1:1.

At times this whole thing feels hypocritical. Generations of laborers grew up with the reality that their work was essentially a commodity. Now that it's our turn, we raise the age old arguments again.

Those "generations of laborers" had the option to earn more for less (and less dangerous) work most of the time. It doesn't seem this will be the case now.

Not at all. The changes were sudden and extreme. Look at the original Luddite rebellion for its oldest incarnation, but just look at the mechanizing of factories in the 60s with the introduction of CNCs or protests against automation at ports.

Automation of labor has been an ongoing force for decades and a reality laborers have had to live with for years.

This is of course not true (for ports in particular the writing had been on the wall for more than a decade) but even if it were, there eventually were other jobs. There won't be this time around.

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