Imagine sweeping through green fields, floating five feet above ground, sun on your face as you slide by on track to your destination.

Not a car in the world, as you simply lean back. And before you know it, you're there.

This is how travel should feel, and on our trains, it does.

Avanti West Coast. Feel good, travel.

Exciting new technology is on the rise, doing the same work that humans can, but faster and more cheaply.

That's great news for the people rich enough to buy these machines.

But it's disrupting the lives and livelihoods of less powerful workers.

And some of those workers are ready to fight back.

I'm talking, of course, about the Luddites, the 19th century textile workers known for smashing automated machinery.

And if you see some similarities between their situation and today's, when the rise of big tech and artificial intelligence is disrupting the labor market and also inspiring a bit of a backlash,

well, you're not the only one.

This is tech quickly, the looms smashing, but tech loving addition of scientific Americans science quickly podcast.

I'm Sophie Bushwick, tech editor at Scientific American.

Brian Merchant is the tech columnist at the LA Times and the author of a new book called Blood in the Machine,

the origin of the rebellion against big tech.

Blood in the Machine tells the story of the Luddites and what their plight tells us about automation today.

And I've heard their movement mentioned a lot recently, particularly in relation to generative AI.

For instance, news recently broke that copyrighted books, including those by Stephen King, were used to train in AI language model.

And then King wrote an essay for the Atlantic in which he says he wouldn't forbid this type of thing and that anyone who would might as well be, quote,

a Luddite trying to stop industrial progress by hammering a steam loom to pieces.

This idea that Luddites just hated new technology is pretty pervasive.

But is it accurate?

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