Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant

Merchant ties together the nineteenth century revolt of workers in England with the current unrest about AI. As such, this is a timely and interesting book.

For the most part this is a fascinating and detailed account of the Luddite movement in early nineteenth century Britain, filled with carefully researched information about the period and events and including documents from the time..

The revolt against the use of powered looms and factory style production started in Nottinghamshire among the silk knitters and weavers. It then spread to other parts of the north, including Manchester. The Luddites took their name from ‘King Ludd’ who may or may not have been based on a real person but whose title was used by the Luddites in their messages to their employers. The acts of sabotage, including smashing machines with hammers, were directed initially against the machinery itself rather than people, but the effects were intended to hit the employers’ profits. Later, there were personal vendettas, culminating in the killing of Luddites by conscripted military forces, and the murder of at least one employer.

At no time did the workers claim not to appreciate technology or new machines, contrary to what their name conjures in the modern mind. They realised that the problem was not the machinery itself but the way it was deployed to make maximum profit for the owners with absolutely no benefit to the working classes. Indeed many of them faced severe poverty. They also objected to the factory system which they could see would destroy family and social life as they knew it.

Some politicians supported them but the king, and later his son as regent, did not. They were also supported sporadically by writers such as Byron and Shelley. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was in fact an allegory meant to show the dangers of the way manufacturing and invention was heading.

The Luddites were in a sense defeated by the state and some of their leaders were hanged, but they paved the way for the growth of trade unions and acts of parliament designed to curtail the worst excesses of the factory owners. It should also be mentioned that some factory owners were sympathetic to the cause and attempted themselves to ameliorate conditions – provided their profits didn’t suffer.

The author also points out the effects on the plantation slaves in America, forced into far harder work to produce sufficient cotton to feed the factories, and the way the plantation owners needed more and more slaves to satisfy demand and of course make themselves rich in the process.

I was surprised that no mention was made of the deliberate wrecking of the Indian cotton industry so that northern England would be the world leader in the field, and that nothing was said about the mindset of the political and business people who were understandably jittery at all calls for reform, something that must have underpinned Peterloo, the Manchester massacre of ordinary people seeking political change. However, the book is already long and perhaps the author, who is American, felt obliged to draw a line somewhere.

Merchant then goes on to draw parallels with today’s concerns about modern technology and artificial intelligence. The term ‘Luddite’ is sometimes thrown at people who express those concerns but it should, says Merchant, be taken as a badge of honour. Again, protesters are not against research, development and modern technologies. Their worries are the ends to which these are put and the fact that the profits are concentrated in the hands of a very few rich people. Not only do the population in general not benefit, but many of them also actually suffer, through loss of earnings, inhuman surveillance techniques, and a worsening of many aspects of society including art, music, literature and other creative cultural pursuits. . Meanwhile there is no democratic way to challenge the tech titans.

The history of the Luddites was meticulously researched and the same scholarship was deployed in giving examples of the way our modern tech giants have moved fast, broken things, and made themselves (like the nineteenth century mill owners) extraordinarily rich.

As the controversy over the use of AI increases readers should query our attitudes to the deployment of innovative technologies and their effect on the wider community. This is by no means a plea to hold back on research, but a very heartfelt one to ask how implementation should proceed.

As a writer using the Smashwords publishing platform I was concerned about the merger with Draft2Digital who almost immediately sent out a consultation survey about AI. Ostensibly this asked whether writers would be willing to have their work ‘scraped’ to train AI if given some monetary return. The results were a resounding NO, and Draft2Digital listened. Whether they agreed with the idea before the survey or not, they will definitely not be going ahead and there is relief all round. I suspect the actors’ and screenwriters’ action alerted a lot of people to the issues involved.

For now, it seems it is worth fighting back and in Britain and Europe we have at present the backing of most politicians, but we should all be wary of the machinations of the ‘giants’ who have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the use to which they put AI.