Time to open our eyes about AI

The word “Luddite” carries a particular connotation. Typically, it’s a term of mockery hurled at a person deemed technophobic, perhaps simply too stupid to appreciate modern technology. But the Luddites were a real group of people with an important place in history. And it isn’t fair they’ve become synonymous with ignorance.

In 19th century Britain, technological advances in the textile industry reduced the amount of labour necessary in manufacturing. Unsurprisingly, this new tech was implemented to undercut labourers, reducing both jobs and wages, with zero social safety net in place to compensate the workers’ loss of livelihoods. The capitalist owners profited massively as they shunted workers aside.

Rather than accommodating these displaced labourers, the government passed legislation restricting workers’ ability to collectively bargain. People began to go hungry and the institutions of society met their rumbling bellies with indifference.

Then the riots started. With no other recourse, workers began to smash, loot and burn, all under the aegis of a mythical leader they named Ned Ludd, which is how they earned their moniker.

These people were clearly not angry at the technology itself. They were revolting against the capitalist system which allowed them to be tossed in the trash bin and against their elected officials who allowed them to be tossed there. Conceivably, artisans ought to celebrate when tech arrives to make their jobs easier. But that only comes in an economic climate in which technology doesn’t inherently supplant their livelihoods for the sake of profit.

By now, many readers will have drawn a parallel to the contemporary. But the plight of the Luddites is different from what we face with artificial intelligence. The innovations in textile production genuinely improved both quality and efficiency, whereas AI is an industry so bloated with hype it is more difficult to assess.

For one thing, “AI” is a marketing term, both broad and vague. Every new algorithm or bit of machine learning developed is now classified as AI because every company is desperate to affix a “now with AI” declaration to their product. And not all these developments are useless. For example, tech has made it easier for anyone to code their own programs and such accessibility is undeniably a good thing. There are also new machine-learning programs which may have revolutionized our ability to develop new pharmaceuticals.

But the way we talk about “AI” writ large makes it sound as if those technologies are no different from the large language model inserted into your Google search bar that doesn’t even know how many times the letter “R” appears in the word strawberry.

These disparate technologies are all being packaged together to smuggle in the mediocre and ineffective, offering the illusion that there is one singular technological revolution taking place that will overthrow every facet of our lives. The goal is to make it seem inevitable, even as it fails to posture as progress.

But like the Luddites, people are standing up and demanding plans to build data centres in their communities be scrapped.

They recognize the environmental impact is not worth hosting these centres and that the promised economic benefits are paltry, especially when compared to the drain on their local energy supplies. And the activists are winning.

Cancellation of data centre projects in the U.S. more than quadrupled from 2024 to 2025. Not that it always takes much pressure, since many of these “planned” construction projects fade away after the announcement. The reasons these projects are deemed unviable vary, though one questions splashy construction announcements are made before performing basic due diligence. A cynic might suspect a craven ploy to game the hype cycle and goose stock prices.

Therein lies the heart of this issue. That leaders have propped our economy up on a hype-cycle around a product most famous for spreading misinformation and deepfake slop.

This frenzy cannot even be apologized for by claiming to be profitable. Investors are beginning to realize the return on investment they’ve been promised isn’t coming, so they funnel in more capital, praying desperately at the altar of the sunk-cost fallacy. Even as many trigger-happy corporations are discovering the true cost of AI is more expensive than the employees it replaced.

And somehow Prime Minister Mark Carney sees this — in typical Canadian fashion, arriving at the party late but still an eager beaver — and envisions Canada’s economic future even as we can see our fellow partygoers dropping dead of the Kool-Aid.

Just as the Luddites did, those of us who reject the narrative surrounding AI understand the technology better than its cheerleaders.

Not only because we understand its technical shortcomings, but because we have clear grasp of its social impacts. We do not dismiss them as economic externalities. And maybe one day the powers that be will frame our struggle as mere technophobia, but I doubt it.

Because this time the “technological development” is little more than a scam to obfuscate our failing economy, whereby we must keep building data centres to fabricate a trillion-dollar industry that has never demonstrated better than a billion-dollar cost-efficient use case. That this is a bubble is now undeniable, and further government investiture is a welfare program for tech oligarchs.

And just as nobody was coming to save the Luddites, we must pop this bubble ourselves.

Alex Passey is a Winnipeg writer.