by: Gary
Often those who are skeptical of the rollout of new technology are accused of being “Luddites,” in reference to the often historically-maligned group of textile workers (swearing allegiance to a mythical King Ludd) in the early 1800s who smashed the looms at factories which exploited and degraded them. Some AI skeptics today have taken up the mantle proudly, while others resist the implications.
Beyond King Ludd, there is another semi-mythical folklore figure who we believe can provide some inspiration for our current moment – John Henry. As immortalized in one of the first folk songs ever recorded, and one of the most-recorded folk songs in American history, he was the “steel driving man” who raced the steam drill in a battle of humanity against technology. But his victory came at a cost – he drove himself so hard he laid down his hammer and died. The struggle against the consequences of technology and automation are nothing new to American workers. Just as rail workers built the infrastructure that connected America in the late 1800s, today workers in infotech labor on the digital infrastructure that connects the world. Just as workers like John Henry then, we are proud of our skills and our abilities, and just as then we are threatened by bosses who seek to replace us with automation. Most importantly, John Henry was not killed or displaced by machines. He died because of the bosses, and because of the speedup the bosses imposed on workers, through the threat of automation. Today, we believe this is the primary concern workers face – not that machines replace us, but that our employers use the threat of automation to degrade our conditions – making fewer workers do more work, through automation and speedups.
As a myth John Henry has had many lives; as a work song, used by railworkers to set the pace of their labor uniformly, and remind them to not let the boss drive them too hard, later as a blues song speaking to the hard lot of those forced to labor or starve, knowing from youth that “this hammer’s gonna be the death of me,” and at times a bluegrass romp, a love song, and even at the birth of country music. The story of John Henry was embraced by American unions and labor activists in the 1930s, then by the American government in the 1940s during WWII. Recently, historians have discovered the figure the story was likely based on – which is also an important story about America. New Jersey born, John Henry was caught up at a young age by the prison system, received what “justice” a black man could expect, and summarily sent to Virginia to work digging the Lewis Tunnel on a chain gang.
Too often, debates over new technologies, such as so-called “generative AI,” are posed in terms of those who support progress and those who are skeptics, or “stuck in the past.” We understand that workers have a variety of assessments of the future potential of AI and its viability, both technically and economically, and while many of us have strong views, we do not take a common position among them. What we all understand is that technology can be used to better society, and can be used to serve workers, making us more effective in carrying out work we take pride in. But technology can also be used to undermine our jobs and working conditions, to make our lives worse and the things we produce more lousy. What happens will be determined by who sets the parameters for its use, either those who work and who know what they need to work better, or those in management who seek only to burnish their resumes and juice the statistics for board meetings. While John Henry is a hero in mythology, we take his story in the spirit it was first told and sung – as a cautionary tale, and a call to action. Don’t steamroll AI adoption – let workers decide!