The real Luddites would have loved AI

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most innovative founders and VCs.

This is our 250th episode, and I wanted to give you something special; something I have been thinking about more and more as my career in startups and venture capital has developed.

Leave a comment

Today we are going to talk about a group of people who are perhaps the most reviled and maligned by technologists and innovators worldwide. People who stand in opposition to everything innovators hold dear. Today we are going to talk about the Luddites — those individuals who through a combination of ignorance and shortsightedness opposed technology and change.

But that’s not really true. The Luddites were not who you think they were. In fact, almost everything you have ever been told about them is wrong.

In truth, the Luddites were not really opposed to new technology. Not even when it threatened their livelihoods.

There is growing concern today about AI taking our jobs, but if AI had emerged 220 years ago, the Luddites would have embraced it. Far more important, they would have held a much better understanding of the true dangers posed by today's new business models than do most of the AI advocates or critics talking about it today.

Although the Luddites are accused of opposing the very technology that resulted in the incredible progress and the rise of living standards that we have experienced over the past 200 years, that’s simply not the case.

In fact, as you’ll see, although the higher living standards and shared prosperity enabled by the technology of the industrial revolution are undeniable, we actually have the Luddites, and not the technology, to thank for that.

The Luddite in the Mirror

So who exactly were the Luddites?

You have probably heard that they were cloth workers in late 18th century England who, early in the industrial revolution, saw their livelihoods threatened by the new textile factories, and they tried to shut down those factories by destroying automated looms and other textile equipment.