Blood in the datacenterIs it time to start burning down datacenters?

Some people think so. An Indianapolis city council member had his house recently shot up for supporting datacenters, and Sam Altman’s home was firebombed (and then shot) shortly afterwards. People from all sides of the argument are sounding the alarm about imminent violence.

The obvious historical comparison is Luddism, the 19th-century phenomenon where English weavers and knitters destroyed the machines that were automating their work, and (in some cases) killed the machines’ owners. Anti-AI people are reclaiming the term to describe themselves, and many of the leading lights of the anti-AI movement (like Brian Merchant or Gavin Mueller) have written books arguing more or less that the Luddites were right, and we ought to follow their example in order to resist AI automation1.

Like many people, I have heard a lot about Luddism and Luddites, but only in the context of it being a general term for someone who is anti-technology. I was interested in learning more about the actual historical movement: what kind of people participated, what it was, and what it accomplished. I read Merchant’s and Mueller’s books, plus others2, to try and figure all of this out. Who were the actual, historical Luddites? What can we learn from them about burning down datacenters?

Who were the Luddites?

The Luddites were a decentralized movement of artisans in the 1810s who engaged in violent protest — smashing machines, threatening violence, and ultimately killing people — over the fact that their jobs were being automated away. They were not rich, but they were certainly not unskilled labor: these were people who had apprenticed for seven years. They were mostly working from home, producing cloth from raw material given to them by their employer, often with tools rented from that same employer. They were working short weeks (three days, per William Gardiner) at their own discretion.

In the early 1800s, their skilled labor was becoming unnecessary. With the help of expensive machines, unskilled labor could now produce lower-quality cloth, so employers were beginning to pass over these artisans in favor of cheaper employees: children, unapprenticed workers, and women3. Combined with the bad economic position of England at the time (at war with France, and thus deliberately cutting off much European trade), times were beginning to be very tough indeed. Starvation was a real threat.

What did they do?

Cloth artisans were groups of capable men who were used to getting their own way, knew each other very well, and were broadly respected in their communities. It was thus a natural response for them to organize into what was effectively a militant union. The Luddites would send anonymous threatening letters to their old (or current) bosses, warning them to stop using their machines. If they didn’t comply, they would raid the workshop or factory, smashing the machines up.

They typically did not harm people, though they certainly delivered threats of bodily harm or even murder, and the raids were violent enough (e.g. shooting through windows) to have risked accidental deaths. In at least two instances where a factory owner was seen as unusually cruel, the Luddites did attempt assassinations: one unsuccessful, and one successful one that eventually prompted a crackdown that ended the movement for good.

Luddism was fully decentralized. Different communities could and did decide to engage in machine-raiding independently, particularly when news spread of the tactic succeeding. Although each community had its own influential men, there was never a single “leader of Luddism”. King Ludd himself was a folk-tale figure. This made it an absolute nightmare for the British government to try and suppress them: putting down one Luddist group did nothing to prevent other groups from continuing to operate.

All the king’s spies

I was surprised by how difficult it was for the government to get a hold of any of the local Luddist ringleaders. The government was willing to offer huge rewards to informers: at one point up to 40x the yearly wage. However, there were no takers for several years. Armies of spies were recruited and tasked with infiltrating Luddist groups, with absolutely no success.

Why was it so hard? Firstly, because the working class was so overwhelmingly pro-Luddist. People universally blamed the economic situation on the government and the factory owners (rightfully so, since the government had chosen to go to war and the factory owners had chosen to embrace automation). Secondly, the communities in question were so insular and tightly-knit that informers would have to rat on their friends and relatives. The handful of people who did eventually inform lived out the rest of their lives as pariahs.

Because each group was so insular, any spies trying to infiltrate the movement would have been complete strangers to the community, and would thus have a very hard time...