Since I deal with Responsible AI as part of my day job — the kind of technology that is meant to improve human lives, and not do harm — I also read about the instances of when it goes wrong. Most of the dangers aren’t “the Singularity” type of thing, it’s not the Rise of Skynet, or HAL, or anything like that. It’s about humans misusing technology to degrade and immiserate others. It’s the relentless chase of profits over everything else, certainly over the health of the planet and societies.
Below are two important books about the history of technology and the lead up to current affairs, something that any artist, any lover of history, any person alive, should read.
I came across Brian Merchant’s excellent blog first, and through it learnt about this book. Merchant is a technology columnist, and has been reporting on Silicon Valley for years across reputable publications.
In this book, he covers the history of the Luddite movement in the early 19th century — and why the term ‘Luddite’ means something different than today’s vernacular of ‘progress hater.’ The Luddites didn’t oppose technology, but opposed the rapacious nature of the factory owners, who used technology to amass and concentrate power, and push skilled workers out by replacing their output with low quality products. His writing style is very approachable an engaging, bringing history to life and making it relevant to today.
In the last chapter, Merchant covers how similar things have been occurring over the past few years around knowledge work and other industries. Human nature (and mathematics of wealth) haven’t changes, and power accumulates. This time it’s Big Tech, at the expense of the rest of us.
Merchant’s style is highly approachable, and makes complex social history easy to read by humanising it. He focuses on the characters that drove the original Luddite uprising — as well as modern ones — and tells the story through their eyes. Nothing brings the class struggle to life, the striving of ordinary people gainful employment and respectable existence, quite like seeing it through the eyes. The conclusions and similarities across the centuries are striking.
HIGHLY, highly recommended reading to anyone interested in the current social upheavals, in how technology and money play part in them, and in how history rhymes and the lessons we can draw from it.
Dr Bender is a professor of linguistics, working in computational linguistics an computer science. Dr Hanna is a director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. They are well-positioned to observe the AI industry, and expose some of the shady (or downright dark) dealings behind it.
After introducing the (shoddy) history of AI as a marketing term, the authors cover all sorts of hype around it — from thinking machines to super-intelligence, from work automation to unsubstantiated claims around science. For each, they review who benefits from the hype, and what are the damages this causes. They show why “AI Doomers” (those that speak of the dangers of AI killing humanity) are just as bad as “AI Boosters,” being largely the same — a distraction from present day evils.
Lastly, they do cover ‘life after hype,’ giving strategies to consumers, users, and organisational buyers to fight the hype and know what they are actually getting. While I find some of their recommendations naïve in this political climate, they are nonetheless something we should strive for as we pick up the pieces after the bubble collapses.
I loved the history of the field of AI since the 1950’s, and the relentless review of all the harms being carried out right now. Recommended reading, in case you weren’t aware of all the environmental and social harms of the technology — or rather, the misuse of the technology by unscrupulous corporations and people — across the world. Recommended.
Somewhat bleaker reading, worse than any dark fantasy because it’s real, but very much recommended to my artist and creator friends, and to everyone in general. If only the humanities were made mandatory education in technology courses, so people would stop thinking Frankenstein is just a monster story and try to emulate it.
And if you want even more on the subject… check out BITM’s post on the best books of 2025.
FELIX THE FOX MYSTERIES 