Where are the Luddites of AI?

Society has a lot of work ahead to ensure that laws are established and sufficiently braced to protect individual health information in the rise of the data analytics frontier. Federal Agencies also need strengthening in their efforts to enforce regulations that moderate the risks stemming from the diffusion of Artificial Intelligence across all strata of life. As the Industrial Revolution proved, workers desperately needed new laws to address the rapid, disruptive, and consequential changes brought on by technology and mechanization that transformed society.

The Industrial Revolution resulted in new laws to enact worker’s rights including those to nullify the demand for poor youths and orphans to work in dangerous jobs (Kiger, 2023). Where are the Luddites for the regulations needed in today’s Industrial Revolution in the rise of Artificial Intelligence, not to indiscriminately oppose technology change, (History.com Editors, 2009) but to ensure existing and new legislation are in place to balance the moral and ethical questions posed by Artificial Intelligence.

An AI society should remain a people’s natural rights first society where human privacy, freedom, and existence remains protected under the law. Unlike the Industrial Revolution where we had impactful tools of efficiency and economy that lacked the ability of human reason, today’s agents of technological advancement are riskier as they possess reasoning and critical thinking skills. Where are the Luddites of reason to ensure that not only AI technology’s impact but that of the behavior of industrialist motivation, for greater profits, is not an irreversible threat to humanity’s autonomy?

-Floyd A. Brown             

References

Editors, History. com. (2009, October 29). Industrial revolution: Definition, inventions & dates ‑ history.

https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/industrial-revolution

Kiger, P. (2023, August 9). 7 negative effects of the Industrial Revolution. History.com.

https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-negative-effects