Fear of Automation is Nothing New

Manufacturing and labor saving technology are all topics on this episode of The AI Minute. For more on Artificial Intelligence: https://voicesinai.com https://gigaom.com https://byronreese.com https://amzn.to/2vgENbn... Transcript: History shows us greeting labor saving technology with outright suspicion and hatred. As manufacturing advances swept through the eighteenth and nineteenth century, every invention was greeted with anger and hostility from labor. French textile workers resisted the automated looms by throwing their wooden shoes into the machinery. In England, the Swing Riots resisted the automatic threshing machines by smashing them. Boatmen destroyed the first attempts at a steam engine, which they felt would put them out of work. So overwhelming was the protest against the ribbon looms in Germany that they were ordered burned by the government. When the fly-shuttle was invented to make weaving easier, its creator John Kay was mobbed. James Hargreaves, who created another breakthrough in textiles called the spinning jenny, saw his creation burned by yet another mob in England. John Heathcoat, who created technology to make the creation of lace more efficient, saw his entire factory and its equipment torched in broad daylight. One final story from the past may show us a path forward. That happened on November 29, 1814. It was on that day that The Times of London was first printed using steam-powered printing presses. The pressmen vowed vengeance upon the machine’s inventors and vowed to destroy the machine itself. However, they were told that if they refrained from violence, they would all be kept on at full pay until similar jobs could be found for them elsewhere at the Times. This seemed fair to the pressmen, and the march of progress continued. http://bit.ly/2YFYfe0 gigaom May 21, 2019 at 04:34PM