The Luddites Were Not The Idiots The Tech Bros Want You To Think They Were
What recent headlines and old history teach us about the AI moment we're living in
Three years ago…
…when Hollywood was in the middle of its writers strike, I pitched an Op-Ed to one of the big industry magazines—we’ll call it The Shmollywood Shreporter—that I thought they would be crazy to turn down.
Turns out I was the crazy one.
In the piece, I argued that the Writers Guild of America should be negotiating with streamers to label movies and TV episodes as “Human Made” whenever they were written entirely by humans without the use of A.I. The idea wasn’t to disallow using AI tools, per se, but to certify films as in the same way food can be certified Organic. Let the public decide what to do with the information, but at least give them the information about whether robots helped write the movie or not.
The big Hollywood magazine turned it down. Didn’t think it was something people would care much about.
I pitched the piece to a handful of other places, including a mag I’ve written for a fifty times. Every publication said no. Basically: no one cares about this.
Fast forward three years, and it’s clear that people actually do care. Here’s the first comment on every post on the Internet in 2026:
Surveys show that Gen Z has a higher opinion of ICE than it does of AI
It’s not just the folks who make money making art who are wary of AI anymore. And it’s not just about some far-off sounding apocalypse anymore. It’s real short term problems. And it’s the “ick” people get when they suspect content is AI generated but not disclosed.
The Hollywood trades (and the WGA itself) should have taken the “Human Made” labeling thing seriously when they had the chance, but today that kind of policy feels like picking low hanging fruit on the side of the river as your raft is about to go over a fricking waterfall.
Jokes about “smashing the servers” are starting to not get as many laughs as they used to.
This week in The Art Of The Zag, Joe Lazer and I broke down 5 recent stories about AI populism that I think are harbingers of what’s to come. In the episode, we talk about:
Organized machine smashers from 200 years ago (and perhaps 2 years from now)
Students booing commencement speakers who bring up AI
What smart people are getting wrong about the “AI job apocalypse” (including Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, who I love, but who I think have been duped by cunning false analogies here)
And how we humans are surprisingly aligned across political divides when it comes to artificial intelligence
What can we do to keep this train from running away from us?
It may feel like these forces are too big to do anything about. But we the people still have power. Let’s not willingly give it up.
Check the episode out on Apple or Spotify, or watch us on Youtube, and let us know what you think of what we propose:
Make a great day,
Shane