automation is obsoletion (in a mostly good way)
3 min read
I’ve spent a lot of time this year pondering AI’s impact on labor, especially in professional fields like mine.
While it’s a bit unsettling, history is clear: automation leads to obsolescence.
"If AI is automating your job, you were decorating, not designing."
Taken from a thread in the #uxok channel of Techlahoma's Slack
But that’s only part of the story. Automation also creates efficiencies that pave the way for new opportunities and real progress.
Ben Thompson did a good job highlighting this in a recent Stratechery post about how armies of bank bookkeepers were replaced by computers over the span of a few decades.
This history lesson reminded me how the skilled working-class textile workers of the Luddite movement, who are often oversimplified as being anti-technology. They began by advocating for fair treatment when industrialization threatened to end their entire trade. The Luddites weren’t anti-progress, they were pro-worker. The whole “sabotage all the machines” part they’re known for came later, not necessarily due to strong anti-machine sentiment but because the machines themselves were easy targets in their campaign for fairness.
Yet, while industrialization greatly reduced the need for skilled weavers, the massive increase in woven textiles expanded opportunities in sewing, tailoring, machine maintenance, and other areas of production.
No one really wants to return to a world where financial systems move at the speed of paper spreadsheets or where only the wealthy can afford comfortable, well-fitting clothes. Technological advancements constantly place essential roles in the crosshairs of redundancy, creating new opportunities but demanding constant adaptation. AI presents an existential ultimatum not just for organizations but for our society. Now is a critical time for thoughtful policy that considers human dignity beyond economic interests. Otherwise, we’ll end up with a new generation of displaced Luddites who don’t reject progress but deserve a fair shot at the opportunities progress creates.
If you find this interesting, I definitely recommend reading the Wikipedia article on technological unemployment, which is hardly a new phenomenon. Also, check out this article from the MIT Technology Review that looks back on a 1938 article written by the then-president of MIT on the same subject.
"It is then easy to fall into a 'public-be-damned' attitude, or to be content with the status quo — forgetting that law of nature so well expressed by Francis Bacon 300 years ago: 'That which Man altereth not for the better, Time, the great Innovator, altereth for the worse.'
Thus, for example, it seems to me that by far the greatest merit in the Sherman Antitrust Law of this country lies not in its protection of the public against exploitation by industrial trust but lies rather in its protection of the public and of industry itself against the danger of complacency which lead to stagnation of industry. By maintaining competition there is insured a continuing incentive to progress and to ever improved service of the public, and thus to maintenance of virility in industry itself."
— Karl T. Compton, former MIT president, in “New Demands on Technology” from the December 1938 issue of the MIT Technology Review
The reality is that technological advancement, market forces, and labor disruption are inseparable. While we can and should advocate for thoughtful policy and fair treatment of workers, we can’t ignore the fundamental economic pressures that drive innovation and change. The challenge isn’t to fight these forces but to prepare for and adapt to them, ensuring that progress, while inevitable, doesn’t have to leave people behind.