From medieval monks who banned tools to weavers burning looms in the 17th century, people have long resisted technologies that they thought would take their jobs or otherwise hurt them. More recently, there has been a wave of resignations at frontier artificial intelligence companies, and opposition to data centers. What do past resistances have in common with current movements?
In his new book, Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine, Thomas Dekeyser, a lecturer in human geography at the University of Southampton in the U.K., explores the points where people rejected new technologies. The pushback against AI is not a rejection of “progress,” but the creation of a future that doesn’t diminish what it means to be human, he told Rest of World.
Read the interview at Rest of the World
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