What if AI wasn't viewed as a threat to people's jobs?
In 1812, British Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act, which made the destruction of textile machinery a capital offense, punishable by death.
What prompted this? In the late 1700's English inventor Edmund Cartwright patented the power loom, which gained adoption in the early 1800's. At the time, a Handloom Weaver was a highly skilled and well paying job. As power looms spread into more textile factories, Handloom Weavers became unnecessary. A single power loom was able to do the work of 30 Handloom Weavers, leaving many humans out of work.
With high food prices and lower wages, people faced starvation. Many of those people rebelled against the new technology, going as far as breaking into textile factories to smash looms. There were so many smashed looms that a law against it was passed.
Tensions around this new technology erupted in the Power Loom Riots of 1826, when angry mobs attacked mills, smashing over 1,000 of them. Over time, loom smashing slowed and was replaced by union formations and political tactics designed to protect workers.
On the positive side, new jobs arose. Loom operators were needed. Skilled mechanics were needed to install, repair and maintain power looms. Former handloom weavers took jobs as factory workers. It was work, but for them it was a pay cut.
The transition into this new technology was anything but smooth.
The parallels to the rise of AI are certainly there. Highly skilled illustrators, coders and researchers are going the way of the handloom weaver, replaced by an alternative. Many other jobs are on the same path.
Though some of the results are similar, the power loom of today is a lot harder to pinpoint. Every software tool has AI embedded. Processes leverage it. AI fluency (however that's defined) is mentioned in every resume and job description. The use cases are endless.
I'm not aware of any raids on data centers or server farms, but there are quiet protests. Many clients I talk with are seeing low adoption rates of AI tools they've rolled out to staff. Many of those staff members view AI as a threat to their job and quietly hope it fails at being more efficient than they are. The tagline of "so you can spend your time doing more important things" doesn't resonate. More important things like what? Trying to find a new job?
If someone's choices are to support a new technology that might get them fired or quietly sabotage that new technology just long enough to find an alternative, it’s hard to blame people for choosing the second option.
Are we falling into another trap? Will enough new jobs emerge to smooth out this transition? Maybe we just have to go through it the way they did in the early 1800s?
But what would it look like if we didn't?
What if the handloom weavers had played an active role in driving the transition instead of fighting against it?
What if textile factories asked handloom weavers what the worst parts of their jobs were and focused on fixing those?
Would that have even mattered or would weavers quietly look to sabotage the new technology anyway?
What if factories facilitated career transitions for weavers?
What if they trained them to maintain the machines?
Most professionals are being told to learn how to make AI work for them, especially ones who have lost their jobs to it. That’s valuable advice, but what about an alternative path?
With the football fields worth of new data centers needed to power AI, there's high demand for skilled electricians, HVAC technicians and everything else that goes into gigantic cities of computing power. Is there a solution there?
Imagine a company offering to sponsor a graphic designer’s career transition into being an electrician? With enough scale, it seems like a worthwhile investment for companies betting big on AI. It’s not a 1 to 1 correlation, but there is a connection.
I haven’t heard of examples like this yet, but maybe there are. The AI transition is happening no matter what, but there must be some takeaways from the past that might make it a little bit smoother.