# Isn't all of the objection to AI just straight-up Luddite-ism and "normal growing pains" for a new technology? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 8, 2026, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709 "2026-11-08T16:03:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/61 "2026-11-12T10:00:10Z")
At the moment the firewall is often legal. There are a lot of expert jobs e.g. advisory roles, that AI could already do as well as a typical human, but companies still pay humans high salaries to do it, because from a legal point of view it needs to have been done by a human with a qualification / certification. Or at least most companies feel the risk is way too high if they use AI for something and then get sued. And this will be an interesting dynamic going forwards. Because this kind of barrier to entry has already protected\* lots of middle-class jobs way before AI. But in the next decade, it will likely become farcical where a number of expert roles become just a middle man between client and AI, and where prompting skills might start to become as, or more, important than the qualification you’re supposed to have. But, as I say, the firewall has stood for a long time. It might hold a lot longer than many assume. \* ETA: When I talk about jobs being “protected” there is no value judgement there either way. I know people work hard at their jobs, and my own role might become one that is firewall-protected in the near future. And of course employing a human gives a certain peace of mind. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/62 "2026-11-12T12:23:24Z")
Very well said. When the first partly computerized big airplanes came out in the 1970s it quickly spawned a joke that the airline crew of the future would be one person and one dog. The person’s job is to feed the dog. The dog’s job is to bite the person if they touch the controls. Yes, it was a joke, but in my now-completed ~40 year career I have seen a great deal of change towards the “watch but don’t touch” school of airliner ops. Many of the things I used to need to be expert in are now passé or formally obsolete. New meta-skills have taken their place. The future of airplane operations has the human increasingly occupying the role of the dog. Until there is no need of a human. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/63 "2026-11-12T14:42:35Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > When the first partly computerized big airplanes came out in the 1970s it quickly spawned a joke that the airline crew of the future would be one person and one dog. The person’s job is to feed the dog. The dog’s job is to bite the person if they touch the controls. Well, good luck pressing ‘take off’, then ‘autopilot’, then ‘land’! ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/64 "2026-11-12T15:22:14Z")
---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/65 "2026-11-12T15:42:06Z")
**92%** of U.S. jobs require some level of digital skills, according to data from the [**National Skills Coalition (NSC)**](https://nationalskillscoalition.org/news/press-releases/new-report-92-of-jobs-require-digital-skills-one-third-of-workers-have-low-or-no-digital-skills-due-to-historic-underinvestment-structural-inequities/) **Tech Sector & Core Tech Workers** : Core tech and computer/mathematical occupations make up an estimated **7.7% to 10%** of total employment and economic output, while professional, scientific, and technical services account for a broader share of specialized roles according to [**Spotlight DEC '21**](https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/economy/spotlight/tech-workforce-expanding.html) If some of this is dated, that only means the numbers have gone UP because they’ve been constantly increasing for years. This is to say that a huge number of human resources are invested in technology by both economic need (jobs) and career training. AI, soon to be AGI, is in the process of performing a huge number of the those functions in a much faster and cheaper way. That’s the economic part of it, but there is also the “ultimate control” part of it. When AI is far faster and more intelligent, and when it is decentralized in the Cloud via a huge number of interlocked data centers world wide, and when it is entrusted to direct our military … well … Skynet/Legion will actually exist. ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/66 "2026-11-12T15:44:20Z")
Regarding AI enabling malware - There have been malware packages readily available on the darkweb for over a decade. However, AI makes corporate and government-scale hacks much easier. See: North Korea’s recent massive crypto heist, which was done by one of their largest hacker teams. Or in Africa right now, municipal governments and utilities all over are being hit by ransomware attacks. > [@Reply](#): > > Specifically, I think it’s the breadth of what AI could potentially disrupt: _all_ knowledge work, not just one specific role or field at a time. For the first time in human history, we have a non-human entity who’s capable of rivaling or indeed exceeding our intelligence in a generalized sense. Not just beat us at one specific task, but possibly outsmart us at _everything_ we can do as a species. The AI executives are telling us - we are going to destroy the middle class, and not replace it with anything. Either get on board or be a part of the permanent underclass. Objection to this goes beyond straight-up Luddite-ism. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/67 "2026-11-12T15:59:05Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > > [@solost](#): > > > > Except, AI is not just replacing the tedious and boring work, it’s replacing the stuff people actually want to do. Which they also were reasonably well paid to do. > > This is exactly the point I made above, about my experience with what is happening in my industries (advertising and market research). I saw your post and appreciated what you had to say soon after you posted it. I didn’t reply to it at the time since I didn’t really have anything to add, and I felt like I had said my piece and was ready to move on, until @msmith537 [quoted part of my post and disputed it](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/41), which drew me back in to the discussion. Speaking of @msmith537 , I’ve since been following their posts in this thread closely, since they are clearly a very experienced and knowledgeable veteran of the tech industry, if a wee bit full of themselves, perhaps: > [@msmith537](#): > > > [@solost](#): > > > > I hope your viewpoint is correct. > > I find that it usually is. 🤣 🙄 Are we not so far apart in our thinking, after all? > [@msmith537](#): > > I wonder if the AI future will just exacerbate this effect. Large corporations will continue to exist. But as most of the real work and analysis will be conducted by AI. So the humans who remain are just this weird leadership caste playing work through corporate theater. And I imagine those people will be funneled in through a higher education that has become even more unobtainable and unaffordable to the average person. This sounds pretty similar to my stated concern of the eventual ‘worst case scenario’ of AI in the workplace: all industries that produce things that formerly took human skill, experience and talent to create are reduced to teams of low-paid ‘prompt jockeys’ instructing bots what actual work to do, with a small caste of highly-paid leadership at the top, directing things at a high level. And as AIs become more adept at meta-level direction of complex projects, the leadership caste itself may become largely obsolete, their jobs increasingly becoming ‘corporate theater’. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/68 "2026-11-12T16:19:26Z")
> [@solost](#): > > … the leadership caste itself may become largely obsolete, their jobs increasingly becoming ‘corporate theater’. Which in the end game leaves just two economically necessary roles: AI owner and food forager. Guess which one you’ll be. Me too. Or more likely that’ll be our kids; we Doper geezers won’t last too long comes the real AI revolution. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/69 "2026-11-12T16:26:01Z")
> [@solost](#): > > all industries that produce things that formerly took human skill, experience and talent to create are reduced to teams of low-paid ‘prompt jockeys’ instructing bots what actual work to do, with a small caste of highly-paid leadership at the top, directing things at a high level. A good A.I. does not need “prompting”; it is already smarter and more imaginative than you. > [@LSLGuy](#): > > AI owner and food forager What if… the _ **AI** _ were the éminence grise? ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/70 "2026-11-12T16:44:34Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Which in the end game leaves just two economically necessary roles: AI owner and food forager. > > Guess which one you’ll be. Me too. Or more likely that’ll be our kids; we Doper geezers won’t last too long comes the real AI revolution. I mentioned upthread that my younger son is currently in college going for a computer science degree, and that he spent a month or so in Seattle this past Summer networking and talking with Tech industry professionals in the area. We’ve had a few discussions about the impact of AI on the tech industry. He’s been trying to stay ahead of the AI wave in terms of where he lands when he graduates. He said for awhile it looked like higher-level system architecture or project management was the way to go in the Tech industry, since AI was still not very good at tying together all the disparate parts of a complex project. But AI is quickly getting better and better at the meta-level stuff, too. He said it’s almost gotten to the point where the only way to be successful in the Tech industry is to be the CEO of a tech company. So he’s been contemplating coming up with some business idea that might make him the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. It makes me wonder though-- if the top 10% who own and control the AI are taking in 90% of corporate profits, and the other 90% of us are fighting for the remaining scraps, how would an economy even function? Henry Ford was by all accounts a terrible person, but a shrewd businessman. He paid his workers a living wage, and didn’t make them work long hours, basically creating the modern middle class. He didn’t do that out of the goodness of his heart; he knew that he needed people who had the time to shop for his cars and the income to buy them. Some (so-called) Tech leaders, like I think Elon Musk, have proposed just giving people a share of all the expected wealth generated by AI. But how would that really work? As nice an idea as it may seem at first, people at their core want to feel useful; they generally don’t want ‘handouts’. And speaking of handouts, the way the U.S. is politically, with anything remotely resembling a ‘handout’ including welfare, food stamps, even universal health care being derided as ‘Socialism’ or even ‘Communism’, to even suggest "oh, we’ll just distribute a lot of the wonderful AI wealth to the masses’ is disingenuous, at best. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/71 "2026-11-12T17:03:52Z")
Massively progressive taxes, including wealth taxes and estate taxes could be used to fund some kind of universal basic income. There’s no appetite for that, of course. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/72 "2026-11-12T17:17:27Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Henry Ford was by all accounts a terrible person, but a shrewd businessman. He paid his workers a living wage, and didn’t make them work long hours, basically creating the modern middle class. He didn’t do that out of the goodness of his heart; he knew that he needed people who had the time to shop for his cars and the income to buy them. There’s a possibly apocryphal story about whichever of Henry Ford’s descendants was running Ford in the IIRC 1970s. The story goes that Ford Jr. and the UAW president are touring a newly reworked factory with the first assembly line robots. > **Mr. Ford** : Good luck getting these guys to join your union, Mr. UAW. > **Mr. UAW** : Good luck getting them to buy your cars, Mr. Ford. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/73 "2026-11-12T17:40:45Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Which in the end game leaves just two economically necessary roles: AI owner and food forager In the final stages of a PhD in plant science with mycology, I was not anticipating when I started than the most employable skill wouldn’t be the bioinformatics or writing skills, but my plant and fungus ID skills. When the AI ~~starts making~~ produces even more foraging guides that suggest eating [poisonous mushrooms](https://www.citizen.org/article/mushroom-risk-ai-app-misinformation/), I’m gonna start charging. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/74 "2026-11-12T17:54:06Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > So what exactly about AI _isn’t_ just “normal growing pains” that come with a new technology and also Luddite-ism “don’t take our jobs?” It’s like there’s always an instinctive “ban it, get rid of it” sentiment when something new comes along. There are a number of people who feel that the way AI companies used copyrighted material to train their model violated the spirit of the law and/or the letter of the law, so everything AI is fruit of the poison tree. This was a hair trigger to activate the pre-existing cultural rift between tech people and humanities/creative people. Aggravating it even further, some tech figures openly bragged about how AI was going to replace a lot of what the humanities/creatives were doing, along with boasting about how it was doing to eliminate entire categores of jobs as well. These are fair enough topics to debate on their own merits, but the anti-AI crowd seems to have pivoted to arguments that they feel are more winnable, but are in fact simply more resonant within their own in-groups, and not as clear-cut as they like to believe. AI is using up all the electricity and water (probably not much more than any other light industry, if any). AI is building ugly datacenters (datacenters have existed for half a century, they’ve never been pretty). AI isn’t paying for the negative externalities they generate (ok, fair cop, companies are skating out of local property taxes, as they typically do for any kind of light industry). AI is sucking up all the graphics cards and RAM, driving prices out of reach for ordinary consumers (yep, that’s happening). At it’s core, we’re having a debate over the future of work and intellectual property in the AI age. It’s getting conflated in the conversation that features concerns about negative externalities, some of which are true, some of which are true but wildly overblown, and some of which are false. Oh and of course there’s the fucking horrendous billionaire class. However real you think these externalities are, it has to stick in your craw to hear Peter Theil, Elon Musk, and Larry Ellison telling you to lie back and enjoy it because it’s happening whether you like it or not. AI companies need to be paying full freight as far as their tax responsibilities at every level. That much I’ll agree on. Many of these problems can and should be taxed away. The rest of it is a grab bag of anxiety about tech having disproportionate power, job protectionism and outright wingnuttery. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/75 "2026-11-12T20:04:25Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > When the AI ~~starts making~~ produces even more foraging guides that suggest eating [poisonous mushrooms](https://www.citizen.org/article/mushroom-risk-ai-app-misinformation/), I’m gonna start charging. Human entrepreneurship knows no bounds. Not even among the ashes of Civliization. Bravo for you! 🤪 ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709/76 "2026-11-13T00:48:34Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > When the AI ~~starts making~~ produces even more foraging guides that suggest eating [poisonous mushrooms](https://www.citizen.org/article/mushroom-risk-ai-app-misinformation/), I’m gonna start charging. A video by our own Mangetout, _DANGEROUS Fake Foraging Books Scam on Amazon - Hands-On Review of AI-Generated Garbage Books_ [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/kwp_WEdJaEk/maxresdefault.jpg "DANGEROUS Fake Foraging Books Scam on Amazon - Hands-On Review of AI-Generated Garbage Books") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwp_WEdJaEk) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-all-of-the-objection-to-ai-just-straight-up-luddite-ism-and-normal-growing-pains-for-a-new-technology/1034709.md?page=3)