In today’s Issue:
- The Luddites take on Artificial Intelligence
- A nefarious plan for surreptitious world domination
- AI’s next beneficiaries will have to reposition their portfolio
Imagine if the Luddites had won. We’d still be toiling at hand looms while our children pluck stray cotton off the floor.
Or worse, the Luddites’ agrarian predecessors, the Muddites, might’ve kept us out in the fields all day long. I can’t imagine my kids keeping a potato on their plate, let alone digging one up.
The steady march of technology improving our lives has withstood all sorts of ridiculous attempts to stop it. Even the Japanese couldn’t keep tech out during their isolationist period.
They eventually gave up and rapidly became rich by copying foreign technology instead of shunning it. And now we have the likes of this to be thankful for. Best of all, it’s free, also thanks to technology.
Not that the Luddites have gone away. They’re still busy warning about what new technology will take away from us. Despite a preponderance of take-away technology to give them food for thought.
Of course, nothing stops you from operating a loom or growing your own food. It’s just that most of us have better things to do with our time.
And that’s the whole point of technology. It makes things efficient, which frees up time to do something else. Whatever that something else is, is what we gain from the technology.
Washing machines and dishwashers triggered a boom in the romance novel industry. The steam engine gave us tourism. And indoor plumbing gave us magazines.
Unfortunately, this indirect relationship between technology and living standards seems to be beyond Luddites’ grasp. Perhaps because they spend the free time that technology gave them on campaigning against it. It’s like those encamped at Glastonbury raging against borders…
Modern Luddites are far more tech savvy than their forebears though. And Artificial Intelligence has them in the biggest frenzy since someone invented the wheel.
Can you imagine what that poor bugger had to go through? The job losses anticipated by economists at the time must’ve been terrifying. The wheel would’ve been public enemy number one.
But we didn’t listen to the Luddites then either.
Is it too late to stop AI?
Perhaps the Luddites have already lost on AI too. It is everywhere already. Not that much has changed. It’s just that things get labelled “AI” to make them seem more fashionable.
A resort I stayed at last year has AI lifts, the receptionist told us. Indistinguishable from regular ones, though.
Writers use AI to create a report out of a few dot points. And then that report is summarised by AI into a few dot points for the impatient reader.
Apparently AI girlfriends are the rage. But do they really listen any better than the real ones?
My internet search engine claims to be AI too. It’s only better to the extent that the non-AI version got mysteriously worse.
Perhaps that’s AI’s nefarious plan for world domination. We won’t even notice it taking over. Because it’s no different.
But I suspect it’s more that AI really was everywhere long before we began to call it that.
So, not many industries stand to be revolutionised. The few that will, however, are worth paying attention to…
Until next time,
Nick Hubble
Editor at Large, Investor’s Daily
