for anyone feeling hopeless about the AI future (some historian optimism)

THIS IS A LONG BOI POST FYI

I'm seeing a lot of frustration and despair about the rise of AI here and all over the internet, and as a historian I wanted to offer what I hope might be helpful words in this dark hour.

We are essentially living through our version of the Second Industrial Revolution (beginning in the 1870s) which saw the emergence of telephones, telegraphs and typewriters, electricity, cars, etc. Prior to that point the First Industrial Revolution (1760ish) saw mechanization and mass production, which completely altered the previous material economies and trades that relied on handmade items and skills. I think our version of this was the digital age/internet (first revolution) and now the AI age (second revolution). Apologies if this is all known to anyone reading, just wanted to set the scene here for my argument.

After these two revolutions, even though new technologies completely changed the world through job losses, increased inequality, decreased manual skills, etc., there are STILL lots of people and business out there doing things the old way. There's a lot of money to be made and interest in handmade furniture, books, paper communication like letter writing, the list goes on. It might not be the dominant culture or landscape, but there are people constantly rediscovering old ways of living (going back to the middle ages even) today in resistance to the AI-pocalypse and just for the hell of it. These things are less common, but not lost.

As humans we yearn to create, and we should and will keep doing it. There will always be better-faster-cheaper ways of getting things done. There will always be shitty people in positions of extreme power that want to exploit the masses. But there will also always be amazing people like this community that fight back, even in the smallest of ways.

I get it though. I was laid off in 2022 in the first big wave of tech layoffs from a job that I LOVED and it was devastating. As a web designer my skills are nearly useless. And I'm not at all standing for this technofedualist future the billionaire sociopaths want for us.

But I'm saying all this cause it is very easy and understandable to think "this is it, everything is over, we're fucked" during rough periods of history, and we are fucked in many ways. But history and technological movements are cyclical. I was reading some 18th century accounts just before the French Revolution and later Mrs. Dalloway (set in 1923), and in both, young people were reconsidering or refusing to have children, asking: what kind of world would I bring them into? But that wasn't the prevailing thought forever. Revolutions, war, civilizational collapse, it's all part of our overarching story. But we also rebuild, tell colonizers and fascists to fuck off, and make cool cyberpunk shit as a middle finger to tech bros.

This might not seem very comforting but the main idea is, "this too shall pass." Maybe not quickly. But so many people throughout history were CONVINCED that they were living through the worst period ever known, but consider how things have improved:
antibiotics, vaccines, airplanes, concrete, photographs, films, gas and electric stoves, street lights, the list is endless.

Everything new we do will always have the potential for good and bad outcomes. But we have to let ourselves really appreciate the good parts, even though the bad ones are extremely loud.

HANG IN THERE FRIENDS <3