Actually, it's an apt label because the machine looms were brought in by factory owners so they could employ less skilled operators who commanded a much lower wage, and the factory owners pocketed the difference. Skilled weavers were up in arms and smashed the machines.
Today, the purpose of AI is not to get a machine to do your job, it's to look good enough to persuade your boss to sack you and split your salary between the boss and the AI company.
> Skilled weavers were up in arms and smashed the machines.
And how did that work out of them? People conveniently ignore that part of history which seems to clearly indicate that outright destruction rarely leads to progress. With AI, I'd argue that we have much more opportunity to steer than to destroy, and the latter is not even a viable option so - why even entertain it at all? It's just raging for raging sake.
Tell that to entire towns and villages of unemployed weavers.
Ultimately, the factory owners asked their rich and powerful friends in government to help them out, and they started having show trials and executing anyone who impinged on factory owners' rights to make out like bandits.
If the Luddites made a mistake, it was in breaking the machines when they could've broken the owners. That would make the next set of owners a little more considerate of the human cost of their enrichment.
I think you answered the problem in the 2nd paragraph yourself - then why are we breaking LLMs and not the owners? We are capable of organizing our society more like a scalpel than a hammer. We can keep LLMs and have them work for all of us and anyone who's saying otherwise is either too afraid or too stupid.
This Luddite AI prohibitionist movement appears to directly harm all of us. It's much better to steer than to destroy.
