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The 404 Media Podcast
The New Luddites: Why People Are Destroying Surveillance and AI Infrastructure
00:52:39
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- [00:00]
Brian Merchant
They didn't win the public's trust, they didn't win the public support. They said, we're going to do this anyways. There was never a real negotiation of the social contract. It was tech companies chipping away at all these things and nobody ever really got a serious vote.
- [00:19]
Jason Keval
Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast. As a reminder, 404 Media is a journalist owned company and needs your support. Subscribers get bonus episodes, bonus segments, and early access to interview episodes like this one. To subscribe, go to 404 Media co. Our guest today for this interview episode is Brian Merchant, my dear friend. So maybe this will be a little bit looser since Brian is my friend and mentor and I owe it all to him. Brian is the author of Blood and the Machine, which is a history of the Luddites and the Luddite movement. Your book is excellent. People should go read it. He's also got the Blood in the Machine newsletter and website which continues that sort of work.
- [01:05]
Brian Merchant
Thank you for that illustrious introduction, Jason. I have to say that I'm. How long has the 404 podcast been going at this point?
- [01:14]
Jason Keval
Since we launched. So August 2023. So two and a half years.
- [01:18]
Brian Merchant
Wow. So how should I feel that this is my first appearance?
- [01:22]
Jason Keval
You finally scored an invite.
- [01:24]
Brian Merchant
At long last. I got the invite.
- [01:26]
Jason Keval
You got the invite while we watched the basketball game last night?
- [01:30]
Brian Merchant
No, I'm. I'm thrilled to be here. I am a big fan of 404 Media.
- [01:35]
Jason Keval
I figured today, Brian, we could talk about so many different things, but I wanted to talk about the violent backlash to technology and to AI and kind of putting it in the historical context of the Luddites. I think there's been like a new Luddism movement, et cetera, I guess. Before we get into it, can you just do the very quick spiel on who the Luddites were so that we're framing them correctly, historically speaking, versus saying there are people who hated technology. And that's it.
- [02:04]
Brian Merchant
The very brief version of what the Luddites were all about is that they were skilled workers, craftsmen, cloth workers mostly. At the beginning of the first Industrial Revolution and as the first kind of wave of what we now call entrepreneurs, started using capital to build some of the first factories and to organize production and to buy more mechanized machines that automated their jobs, the Luddites, or those who would become the Luddites, the cloth workers basically kind of, you know, started a peaceful protest at first because these factory owners were using more and more automated machinery not to fully automate the process not to turn it over completely to machines, but basically to sort of justify paying new workers less. So they'd hire children, they'd hire migrant workers and itinerant workers, precarious labor. And they were undercutting the skilled craftsmen who had a system for hundreds of years that basically organized labor and production in the cloth trades in England. And. And so when those early factory owners took their capital and their influence and their resources to build those factories and to start concentrating sort of the power and wealth in their hands and sort of dictating the terms of how production would unfold, the Luddites rose up. After spending about a decade trying to do things, quote, the right way and you know, petitioning Parliament, trying to get laws passed. Eventually, you know, they had no choice because they were laughed out of Parliament. Their wages were eroded to the bone and they were quite literally starving. They organized a rebellion essentially against those factory owners and they took up hammers quite literally and organized sort of guerrilla raids to, to smash the, the machinery and the factories of the, the most sort of quote, obnoxious own. It's the movement spread all across the industrial districts of England in 1811 and really for the next couple of years brought England to the brink.
- [04:26]
Jason Keval
Yeah, I wanted to start this conversation by framing it that way because I think what Blood in the Machine does now your newsletter is sort of take that historical context and use it to help us sort of understand this moment that we're seeing in technology and society today where, you know, AI powered job loss is, you know, threatening people. And you have people pushing back politically, but then you also have increasingly people pushing back violently. And I think the, the sort of first article you did about this was people burning Waymos in downtown LA during the initial ice raids. There's also here in la, there's a lot of delivery robots and they are constantly being knocked over, bashed in with baseball bats, things like this. And so it's like the kind of like autonomous or semi autonomous robots roaming the streets here have been something of like fair game for run of the mill vandals, but then also more politically inclined protest.
- [05:32]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, and I think. So that's been, I think the debate all along is whether it's not. Whether it's just people who see an easy target, something that's unmanned, you know, obviously doesn't have a driver or in it who's going to get out and yell at you or try to fight you. And so it's something that, you know, I mean, they are all surrounded by, you know, A surveillance apparatus. So they're all taking video. So there is. So there is that, and people are doing it anyways. But I would argue a couple things. I think, according to my reporting, the prevalence of Waymo, which everybody knows is owned by Google, one of the big tech firms that has sort of colonized our digital and everyday lives in many, many ways. That's an inextricable element of people's understanding of these vehicles, that these are sort of vestiges of big tech. They are avatars of big tech kind of roaming the streets. So they see these autonomous vehicles and it immediately, to a lot of people, it invokes anger. It invokes fear. Like anger, as in, I didn't ask for this. These things are driving around my neighborhood. And so when I was investigating the torching of the Waymos, which, you know, was clearly deliberate, somebody or multiple people, I don't even know if we to this day know who. Who they are, if they were burner accounts.
- [07:10]
Jason Keval
I'm not aware of, like, anyone being arrested or caught for. For doing this. Like, despite the fact that there's so many cameras on them and all that. I mean, maybe. Maybe they were. And I just didn't see.
- [07:22]
Brian Merchant
No, I don't think so.
- [07:23]
Jason Keval
Yeah. It's kind of interesting that despite the fact that these are surveillance tech, that no one was really caught, especially because
- [07:30]
Brian Merchant
they had to be summoned. Right. So that's the other thing about this protest, is that there were six of them, if I remember correctly, and they were summoned sort of to a point at each, to like a point in the block in downtown la, and they were methodically set on fire. So I went down the next day and you could see the charred huts. I mean, these things burnt to a crisp. They burnt right down to the chassis. They were like, to the point where it was like. I think they didn't know how to transport them. They were just smoldered into the ground.
- [08:06]
Jason Keval
I mean, I'm looking at the photos now. They don't even look like cars. They're barely recognizable. They're just like piles of ash, essentially.
- [08:14]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, they are. And so, like, they had to be, I'm sure, like, strategically removed from the road somehow. And so when I reported it out and was talking to people who were there at the scene, they claimed to have heard. Heard people yelling about the spy cars. Right. So that was very much in the air. The fact that these were tools of surveillance, in addition to just making a very striking image, it sent a message. And that was a year ago. And if anything Tensions are only higher now. Certainly Silicon Valley has not been deterred from continuing to show up at White House dinners, continuing to partner with the Trump administration, continuing to seek out, you know, defense contracts.
- [09:04]
Jason Keval
Well, I think one of the things that kind of directly ties this to the Luddite movement is that, you know, the Luddite movement was largely a labor organizing movement. And, you know, we're going to talk about some technologies here that people are attacking, burning, you know, fucking with that are maybe less tied, are more like surveillance technologies and less like things that directly threaten jobs. I think with a Waymo, you kind of have both in that they are these roving surveillance cameras, but then they also sort of threaten, you know, the cab industry.
- [09:40]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, absolutely.
- [09:41]
Jason Keval
Then there's also a big debate, at least here in la, about who should be allowed to use kind of like public infrastructure, meaning the roads in this case. But a lot of the backlash to delivery robots are like, well, these delivery robots are taking up the sidewalks, which are already very few and far between in Los Angeles. It's like, notoriously a dangerous place for pedestrians. And you have these robots with faces on them driving around the sidewalks and getting stuck. My dog almost got run over by one when I was walking him once. And it's just like there is a backlash to it. And I think there's also the fact that the people who use these things, they're able to kind of like abstract themselves away from dealing with society to some degree. It's like part of the point of Waymo is like, well, you don't even have to talk to an Uber driver. You don't have to interact with society at all. And with the delivery robots, it's like, you know, for a while, you call the restaurant, they send a delivery person over, and you, you know, open the door and you tip them or whatever. Then during the pandemic, it's like, well, contactless delivery. Just leave it at the delivery door. And then with the delivery robots, it's like, well, we've gotten rid of the person altogether. Or that person is using an Xbox controller to drive these, you know, from like a college campus in Nebraska or something.
- [10:58]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, and before. I think that's all absolutely correct. That is the intention here, I think, and that even sort of. I, you know, this sort of insight or this comment is, like, so old at this point that I've even forgotten who said. It's just received wisdom. But, like, a lot of these, you can view a lot of these services and especially, like, sort of like the Uber for X wave of like 10 or 15 years ago as like, you know, what, like what? Like what? Like rich college boys, like, want, like what they're like, they're all trying to design apps that would do what their, you know, mothers used to do for them without having to talk to anybody, right? Like get a ride somewhere, listen to music, get food, like, handed to them directly and without making them uncomfortable at all. So I think that that holds true on one level. And I wanted to go back to sort of, I think the broader point and the commonality between all of this stuff is that like the labor, the, the labor element is real. And that I think was ultimately sort of the motivating factor once the Luddites sort of did rise up and they like couldn't make a, make a living, you know, doing their work anymore. But even the foundation of their discontent, you know, underneath that was the fact that they were getting left out of the picture. They didn't have a seat at the table. You know, technological development was only serving, you know, a few people and it was being done profoundly anti democratically. And so that's the, I think, the common thread. They were protesting a way that their way of life was being changed against their will. And the prospect of having to, you know, sit with a boss for the first time, like have to ask to go to the bathroom, like sit in a windowless building and work for, you know, 10 hours a day instead of working at home at, on terms and hours that you dictated. That's how the Luddites used to work and that's how they were used to. It was a much better, you know, way of life and they were fighting against the imposition of the factory system by the hands of a few people. So similarly, I would argue that if you go back to sort of the first measures, when San Francisco and California more broadly was sort of trying to vote on allowing these cars onto the roads, there was tremendous public backlash. There was tremendous public outpouring of protests. People were against it pretty overwhelmingly. And they wanted a few major things from the tech companies that the tech companies never gave up. Like, they wanted transparent data sharing. And there have been some measures, half measures, and nods towards some conciliatory measures. But they're not behaving as a public stakeholder or somebody that's part of the government. Again, it's flying in the face of public will. And so whether or not, you know, the statistics indicate that they're, you know, 3% safer or fewer traffic or whatever, the data says that, you know, Google or Waymo bandied about in those hearings, they didn't win the public's trust, they didn't win the public support. They said, we're going to do this anyways. And I think that has been the unifying theme of a lot of these technologies, you know, from the, you know, from the delivery robots to the, you know, driverless vehicles to sort of a lot of the AI. AI tech. So, yeah, what recourse do most people have, you know, to say, like, we don't like this, like, we don't want AI in our schools. We don't want, you know, a Waymo roaming my city block. Like, we would rather not have this. What. What can you do? Your. Your options democratically are very limited. You know, so it's typically been, oh, you don't like it, Too bad. Like, learn to. Learn to like it. Learn to be okay with it. And so it's totally unsurprising that you see demonstrations of vandalism or worse.
- [15:11]
Jason Keval
Yeah. To put this, I guess, back into a historical context, were the Luddites successful? As in, did destroying these looms and things like this lead to meaningful protections for workers or any sort of political progress on that front?
- [15:31]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, I mean, I argue. There's a whole chapter in my book where I argue that the Luddites were a lot more successful than people give them credit for. So on the number one, they were incredibly popular in their day, right? Like, just like, there was kind of like this recent, like, kind of like, oh, shit moment where after the Molotov cocktail guy, you know, threw it at Sam Altman's house and it was proliferated on social media and people were like, you know, oh, good. You know, like, that was a sentiment. It was another kind of like Brian Thompson Luigi moment where people were, like, celebrating, you know, roundly, the.
- [16:10]
Jason Keval
The.
- [16:11]
Brian Merchant
The people who were, you know, attacking this executive, and it, like, it really shook, you know, understandably so a lot of people in Silicon Valley. But to. To that end, yeah, the Luddites, like, often operated with impunity. They would go in broad daylight, sometimes in kind of a parade to go smash. Smash up a factory that was full of, you know, automated loops. And so people would cheer in the streets when the Luddites went and smashed these machines. You know, they got folk songs written about them and, And. And hymns, you know, General Ludd's triumph. It survives today Chumbawamba I get knocked down I get up again they have a General. They do a version of General let's try because it still survives today did
- [16:56]
Jason Keval
not know that did not know that.
- [16:58]
Brian Merchant
That's what I'm here to. I'm here to share the knowledge. Anyways, the point is that they were successful in the short term. In the very, very short term. They got a bunch of factory owners to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, we'll put the prices back to what they were so you can make a living. We can make a living. That didn't last very long, of course, but it did establish this sort of short term truce, number one. Number two, it sort of seeded the reform movement. People were not allowed. Workers were not allowed to collectively bargain or form un unions by law. And so a lot of the Luddites after they were crushed by the state, so, you know, the state did organize an incredible effort of force to combat the Luddites and they used more troops than they had fighting the war against Napoleon to put down the Luddites. It was like the biggest domestic occupation of England. So they fought a war basically against the Luddites and eventually crushed them outright. And the Luddites were hung and they made a big show trial and hung them at York Castle. So like, you know, lots of Luddites were killed and yet they inspired, you know, a future generations of workers both to fight for reform. A lot of the Luddites themselves went on to join the reform movement, which did lead to winning the right to collectively bargain. It sort of imprinted culture. And so, yeah, so you had real reform, some cultural imprinting, and then some subsequent actual sabotage movements that took after the Luddites. So it was in some ways, you know, actually a pretty. It was certainly important and certainly crucial. And I think without Britain like really turning to kind of propagandize against the Luddites, I think we think of the Luddites like Robin Hood, right? Like something. It's like as, like as like heroes who like faced down enormous odds and you know, may have lost their battle, but, you know, may yet win the war and may yet find a way to have technology serve everybody's interests and not just a few.
- [19:04]
Jason Keval
I want to talk about Flock now because speaking of sort of the democratic process and lack thereof, one of the through lines of my reporting on this is that so many communities have like signed flock contracts without much public debate. And so basically like police will use discretionary funds or maybe there will be like a city council meeting or there was a city council meeting like years ago where, you know, the city agreed to buy flock cameras. And then the, you know, people didn't go to it and they didn't really know what was happening. And now they're finding out through our reporting and other reporting that like, this surveillance is incredibly invasive. This surveillance may or may not lead to reduced crime. This surveillance is being filtered up to ice and it's, you know, you have cameras at playgrounds and all this sort of thing. And so I wanted to talk, I guess, a little bit about this story you did called across the US People are dismantling and destroying flock surveillance cameras. And it was like a series of basically like people bashing these cameras in. You know, there was one in La Mesa, which is a suburb of San Diego. There was some in Eugene, in Springfield.
- [20:22]
Brian Merchant
Yeah. There was some in Oregon and in Virginia. And in Virginia there's like one guy who went around and personally dismantled like a dozen of them before he got caught.
- [20:39]
Jason Keval
And they left a little sticker that said, haha, get wrecked, you surveilling fucks.
- [20:45]
Brian Merchant
That one was in Eugene, I think. Yeah, you know, it's just one of those, I think, technologies that comes along and just kind of unifies everybody in their creepiness. They're just giant surveillance cameras that are just being set up in communities and watching everybody at all times. And it's. That is just something that inherently gets under people's skin. You know, it's a. It's like a true bipartisan issue. You know, anybody who is interested in civil liberties, you know, thinks this is a. Tends to think this is a terrible idea. And so you, you know, it's just, you know, you don't. It's not something that you want where you live. And so again, like, when people don't have democratic recourse and they feel like they're not being listened to and they're in fact not being listened to, when most often, again, as you said, these things are tremendously unpopular, but it just shows again, like the trajectories, like where our state has been going for in general. You know, obviously there are exceptions and it's an even path, but it's just more gear for cops, more surveillance technology, like more partnerships with inscrutable firms that store and manage this data and occasionally lose it. And it's another sense where it feels like it's an otherwise unaccountable entity that people can't push back on normal means. So yeah, I'm not surprised people are breaking them, smashing them, sending political messages.
- [22:33]
Jason Keval
I've done a lot of hiring in my life, and the best hires that I ever made weren't the people who are most qualified on paper. It's the people who clearly wanted the job and had some intangibles that, you know, maybe wouldn't show up in a resume or a cover letter. But when I talked to them, I could just tell right away they asked better questions. They were generally curious about the role, and it felt like they were already invested in our work before even getting hired. That kind of energy makes a huge difference. If you're hiring, you want a candidate who's passionate about your role, but you can't get that insight from a resume unless you post your job on ZipRecruiter. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com 404Media what makes ZipRecruiter different is how quickly it connects you with the right people. Their powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates fast, and they've got a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first. 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Go to surfshark.com 404media to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN. Plus there's a 30 day money back guarantee. Or just use code 404media at checkout. That's surfshark.com 404media because knowing how the system works doesn't mean you have to be an easy data point in it. There's a moment when you start something, a store, a project, a business, anything, where it stops being an idea and starts becoming real. For a lot of people, that moment is the first sale. That first notification hits and suddenly it's like, okay, this actually works. Someone out there actually wants what I made. But getting to that point can feel overwhelming. Figuring out a website, payments, marketing, shipping, it's a lot. That's why people use Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide and about 10% of all E commerce in the US from massive brands to people just getting started to 404 Media's own merch store. 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And people there have been filing Freedom of Information act requests about flock there. And they basically got these access logs of like when flock cameras were being accessed. And there were all of these instances of flock Employees accessing cameras at private businesses and organizations. And they were, like, highly sensitive cameras. So this included, like a children's gymnasium, like a gymnastics room, it included, like, a public pool, it included a fitness center, things like this. And so what was actually happening, at least according to Flock and according to the city, was Flock was doing these sales demos. And so what they were doing was they were basically advertising the capabilities of Flock cameras to other cities, law enforcement. And so as part of that, they were, like, accessing this dashboard, which included all these cameras in all these sensitive places. And so rather than the story sort of being like, oh, these Flock employees are creeps looking at our children, it was like, well, the Flock employees are using these cameras in sensitive places to sell this technology to other police departments. And, like, that's like a. It's a nuanced difference, but, like, it is slightly different what was happening versus what was being accused of happening. And that. That's, you know, taking Flock's word for it. And I know that this is a little bit complicated, but basically there was a city council meeting about all of this, and for three hours, people got up to the, you know, podium, and they were like, why are our Flock employees looking at our children?
- [29:07]
Alyssa Midcalf
It's. It's pretty shocking to me that in, what, less than a month, basically, or just a month, that we found out that Flock employees are not only lying more than they said they were, but watching children and done with it. Like, isn't that mind boggling? You, like, you guys want little Epstein's to have access to cameras all across your city? I mean, that's. That's crazy to me. Me. Like, what are you guys talking about? That's ridiculous. And you're thinking about approving a contract with them. How is that sensible to anybody? It's like, would you put their camera in your child's bedroom? I don't know, but it seems a little bit like it to me if you're thinking about approving the contract when we already know they watch the children in the swimming pool.
- [29:54]
Jason Keval
And, like, why. Why do we have a deal with this, like, with this company? Like, how could you have let this happen to the, you know, city council members and the mayor and all of this? And what was said to them was basically like, you guys are wrong. Like, there's a technicality here. They were using this to sell the technology to other, like, cities. And that is, like, an incredibly unsatisfying answer. And that is the answer that we've gotten with so many different Flocks scandals where it's like, oh, these cameras are streaming unencrypted to the Internet. Oh, like, they're sharing information with ice, but they're doing it through this, like, you know, little program that your city opted into, like, so on and so forth. And I think that what I see happening, and which I can't blame people for, is they are like, they're getting the broad strokes of the situation correct, where it's like, this is highly invasive surveillance technology. We don't want it in our city. And then the politicians are saying to them, like, no, you're wrong. Like, it's, it's, it's not quite that. It's something different and you guys are overreacting. And then it's a situation where, like, the politicians are not listening to their constituents because dozens and dozens of people were like, we don't want this tech. Like, get it out of here. And what they were told basically was like, well, you're like, slightly wrong on the nuance here. Like, we're going to keep, we're going to like, tell them they can't use our cameras to sell their products anymore and, like, we're gonna keep the contract going.
- [31:25]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And. Yeah. And how are you supposed to feel after that? Like, after. I mean, it's not, it's, it's, it's another case, I feel like, of politicians just, you know, like, fixating on what they kind of believe or. And for the last two decades or so, with sort of the, you know, the, the sort of the rise of the latest iteration of Silicon Valley to be an inevitability and just saying, like, oh, well, this isn't, you know, like, you're exactly like the fine, you didn't, you know, the fine print. You got that a little bit wrong. Trust me, it's going to be okay. And a, it's very often not okay. I know, I know. You have found so many of these instances, like the ones you just described, where it's just like, it's being run by idiots there. It's, it's being mismanaged. You know, like, data is often just made available to not only hackers, but just like the broad public and in ways that is. That is incredibly violating or has the potential to be. But also just like, I feel like the bigger thing that everybody is missing. And again, it just like speaks to this whole sort of crescendo of sentiment where people have just kind of had enough and are taking this out on tech of all different kinds, is that it's a question of how People want to live, Right? Do you want to live in a town that's just being monitored all the time by cameras and that data is being piped to some tech company somewhere? Do you want, like, that sort of change to encompass, like, your daily life, your routine? And maybe, like, people say, like, oh, well, if people are against privacy, then why do they carry around phones? Or why are they okay with, you know, the zoom terms of service or whatever it is? But it's just like, can't you see that there was never a real sort of negotiation of the social contract? It was tech companies chipping away at all these things, iteration after iteration, product after product, our product. And nobody ever really got a serious vote on some of these. It's this again, this change that's being shoved down people's throats. And that is something that is exemplified by a flock camera that's plain for everybody to see. That's just kind of like sitting there on these huge poles that you can't ignore. It's like, oh, that's the surveillance beacon in town. That's where our images are. Are being, like, uploaded and piped to a corporation somewhere. And it's similar with the data center thing, too, where there's, like, a public manifestation of concerns that people have but have not had otherwise. You know, sort of like a tactile or easy way to direct that anger at, because it may well be that people are totally uncomfortable with the ways that their phones are surveilling them, but it's just the phone itself has become too important to the modern social contract for most people to throw out. And so maybe it's like, well, give and take. I don't like the surveillance. I don't like the fact that it's ingesting all my data, but I have to have it. That's not true with a flock camera. Right. It's not like, oh, this is providing a great public service. It's all downside to a lot of people. And so I think that the animosity towards flock cameras is totally understandable and totally valid, too. Yeah.
- [35:08]
Jason Keval
And I think that, you know, we both sort of said this, but I think that what's happening in, like, Dunwoody, from what I saw, is like, the constituents want to have one conversation, which is like, why do we have this technology at all? We feel like we weren't consulted on the fact that, you know, we have cameras all over the place and that you allowed flock to use us as, like, a sales pitch to other police departments and what the politicians and what flock are hearing is like, oh, these people are like, mad about some anomalous thing that happened. We'll just say that that won't happen again and then we'll just like, continue on. We'll take for granted that these cameras need to exist and that they will stay in our community. But we're. We're not going to have the conversation about, like, dismantling the network altogether. And I think that, that, that's similar to, you know, here's my next segue, similar to, like, the debate that is being had with AI and AI data centers and things like that, where it's like, well, all of the tech companies are saying you're going to use AI. Like, you are going to use AI. We're going to make sure that you use AI. We're building AI. We are going to get rid of jobs and you're going to have to, like, learn how to use it, and there's nothing that you can do to stop it. And, and also we're going to build all of these data centers. We're going to build them all over the country because we need this technology. And by the way, there's going to be all these awesome construction jobs, but then no jobs after they're set up and that sort of it. And it will be very extractive.
- [36:47]
Brian Merchant
One guy to walk through the server and make sure that all the wires are on straight.
- [36:52]
Jason Keval
Yeah. And it'll use tons of water and tons of electricity and your bill might go up and it'll make noise.
- [36:57]
Brian Merchant
It'll make noise.
- [36:58]
Jason Keval
But. So we are, I mean, we are starting to see a backlash to that as well. But I do feel that in a lot of towns, like this sort of democratic process that's playing out is more of a, like, temporary moratorium on these sorts of things versus a like, outright no, we're not going to do it sort of thing. But have we seen sort of this same sort of backlash, like violence against data centers and against like, AI infrastructure? Or do you think that that's coming?
- [37:29]
Brian Merchant
I mean, at this point, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it started happening, especially now there are data centers that have been approved even when there has been just overwhelming public opposition and outcry. And I mean, maybe most famously the. But Indianapolis City council voted to approve data centers or a data center project after a lot of public opposition and contentious town hall meetings and all that. And then after they passed it, somebody slid a note onto one of the city council members who voted for it, slid a note that said no data centers onto his front porch and fired a gun 13 times into his front door. That happened the same weekend that, you know, somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house and then somebody else fired a gun outside of his house.
- [38:37]
Jason Keval
I guess just to be clear, and I hope this is clear, but it's like we're just, we are reporting on the fact that these things are happening. We're not saying like this is the way to fight against this, but it is, it's like what has happened historically when people feel disenfranchised about technology and, and this. You know, you did an article quite recently about a brief history of techno negativity and you know, people like lighting things on fire. Luddites lighting things on fire. I know that was written by a freelancer of yours, but dating back to like ancient Greeks, there were people who like broke machines that they felt were not serving them. So I mean, this is not like a, this is not like an anomalous thing that is happening now, but it
- [39:25]
Brian Merchant
is maybe in some ways capable of creating a new precedent. Because in a lot of ways the story that the tech industry has told about AI is that they're building the technology to end all technologies that is smarter than a human, can do anybody's job and will do everybody's job and will wipe, wipe out millions and millions of jobs. So the story and the narrative behind this technology is even greater and even more sort of momentous than some of those other technologies that I think industrialization 200 years ago, the first industrial revolution, is a pretty reasonable analog there just in terms of how much change it inspired. The difference is this time is like sort of the industry is itself sort of cheerleading that change. And as you pointed out, people have vastly different reactions to that. A recent much discussed NBC poll found that Gen Z pretty much just hated AI. It was 44 net negative of points for people who are aged, I think like 18 to 34. And you understand why, right? Like all these executives and pundits and say, well, all the jobs are going to be gone. AI is going to do it. And it's the same time that, you know, young people are trying to enter the workforce and think about the future. And it's like the story they're being told is AI is taking over that future, whether they like it or not. And so, yes, it's creating this combustible situation that we've seen throughout history through different industrial and technical revolutions. But this time the difference is that industry itself has created this story where they're basically the villains. The AI CEOs are the villains. So they're saying, like, we're going to do all this stuff. We're going to get rich doing it. We're going to go on every talk show and say, your jobs are dead and you need to let us build data centers in your backyard. And investors are rewarding them for it, saying, here's an unprecedented amount of capital that you can invest in building all this stuff out again, whether anybody wants it or not. So, yes, you're just building this building to this conflict that I do kind of feel like historically. Again, we're just explaining the conditions here. I think we're talking about the conditions and why this is happening and why I'm not surprised any of this is happening. As somebody who spent three or four years researching and thinking about and writing about the Luddites, and it absolutely rhymes with this moment right now. And I just wonder if this moment's going to have an exclamation point on it or not.
- [42:20]
Jason Keval
Yeah, yeah. I mean, even Sam Altman has said something like, AI has a horrible, you know, public relations problem. And that's part of why he bought, you know, the fucking. The tech podcast, just basically to be like their marketing arm, tbpn, I believe it's called.
- [42:36]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, that should do the trick. Yeah, by a pro AI podcast.
- [42:41]
Jason Keval
Yeah. And I mean, it's like they understand that people hate this technology and yet they are saying, well, we are building God. We are building the AI God. It will take all of your jobs. It is like super unclear what is going to happen to all of you who lose your jobs. There's some light gesturing at the idea of a universal basic income or, or an expanded social safety net, but like, that's not happening in any real way at this moment. And so in addition to the technology itself and how people don't like the technology and how it is being used to like fear monger against them, there are also these like highly unpopular externalities associated with AI. And by that I mean, you know, not just like the destruction of the Internet and things like that, but like, like the loud noises if you're by a data center, the increased electric bills if you're by a data center. And then even like among people who you would expect to possibly like AI, you have things like buying a gaming PC is much more expensive now because all of the ram, there's like RAM shortages and hard drive shortages. And so you have like all of these open source folks and like archivists and data hoarders and stuff being like, well, I can't even buy hard drives now because, like, like our entire economy has reoriented itself toward AI. And so it's like, there's. If you're not like, in Silicon Valley working for one of these AI companies, there are very few, like, proponents of the technology.
- [44:15]
Brian Merchant
I feel at this point, yeah, PlayStation prices have gone up. That's the other element of this is that, like, it is just a reflection of the, you know, simmering resentment towards inequality in general. And that's another way to understand, like, the, this backlash against tech and the AI companies and big tech and ICE and the Trump administration as all of these drivers of exacerbating an inequal society and sort of profiting off of this dynamic and the sort of coming, if the AI companies get their way, the coming transfer of wealth from all these jobs that they're automating, all this new surveillance that they're doing, all this new data that they're ingesting, extracting all of that from ordinary people and then sort of sending it upstream. And so I think it's a pretty good reflection of how a society is going to feel about AI is whether or not they're already unequal or not. So polling around AI is deeply negative for that reason. People could just be looking at sort of like the contours of the American economy, the American society, and saying, like, this is a sick society. Like, this is, you know, there's a, you know, we're watching the ascent of this tech oligarchy. You know, there haven't been, like, serious meaningful wage gains that have translated into too much, like, prices are too high, famously, things aren't affordable. That's how we got a socialist mayor in New York City. You know, it's. I think AI is very much bound up in all of this sentiment and people listening to what the tech companies and the tech AI, the AI CEOs, you know, what they're saying and saying, okay, if that's what you are saying you want to do, replace everybody's jobs and build the next, you know, $4 trillion company that you can profit off of it all, well, then, that and what I get it now, and I got a tool that can summarize my emails for me, that's what this deal is. That's what I get, and that's what you get. Fuck you.
- [46:33]
Jason Keval
I guess the last thing is sort of, what types of things and actions will you be looking for, kind of moving forward to see whether there is one, I guess, a backlash to AI? And this sort of technology. But also what sort of progress do you want to see? I will answer that first. And I do think that that AI and data centers and automation more broadly are going to become like a top three political issue of our time, like maybe as soon as this election. But I don't know. What do you think?
- [47:08]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, I mean, I think it's already shaping up to be exactly this way. I mean that's also why the AI company, I mean the other piece of this that we didn't even mention is that like the AI companies in Silicon Valley are like building a sort of, of lobbying apparatus to pour hundreds of million dollars into fighting any politicians that would kind of stand up and make noise like this. Because I think they recognize that it does stand to be so popular. And just last week I was in Monterey Park, a city that's just a few miles east of downtown la and it was at a city council meeting where the proposition on the table was to, not just to put one of those moratoriums, you're talking about an actual ban on building data centers in Monterey Park. And I listened to hours of public testimony. The only voices in favor was the building trades, some of the construction workers who had been sent there by their bosses to say hey, this will give us some, some very temporary jobs. Everybody who lived there that showed up was said no, was just like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And it was nearly unanimous. And it's not hard to see how like something that popular is good politics. We've seen, you know, Bernie Sanders and AOC propose a nationwide data center ban and win some headlines. Doing that. We' and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis takes sort of the, the, the other end and kind of take a reactionary opposition towards AI. So yeah, I don't know, I think anti data center policies, aggressive AI, you know, regulations, all that could be really popular. And we just, before we go, we have to underline that the AI companies have been making this harder on themselves by going full bore the other direction. They tried to outlaw the passage of state level AI laws last year. They tried to do it over and over. They spent millions of dollars on lobbying campaigns and they got an executive order ultimately cuz it failed twice in Congress. But they're trying to make this as anti democratic as possible.
- [49:30]
Jason Keval
Well, and the main moratorium on data centers, the Maine passed a law against data centers and the governor, Janet Mills, who's running for Senate, vetoed it it. And so I mean this is when a governor vetoes something like that, it's because the lobby got to them. Like, that's kind of. That's exactly what happened.
- [49:48]
Brian Merchant
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and like, again, you're just creating the conditions for more anger and for more, you know, like, of people feeling completely disillusioned with the political process, people feeling sort of disenfranchised and people feeling angry. Again, we're not saying this is what should happen, but when you deny people a voice, when you deny them a vote, when you say the industry knows better, you need to fall in line. When you say that enough times, and the conditions on the ground worsen and worsen and worsen and the world gets scarier and scarier and inequality continues to be unbearable for a lot of people. You've created a tinderbox. And that's when I think you go from these more demonstrative actions against data centers or against politicians to upping the stakes. It's going to be an interesting few years, that's for sure.
- [50:55]
Jason Keval
Brian, where can people find you?
- [50:58]
Brian Merchant
I have a newsletter, Blood in the Machine. It's also soon going to be a podcast, so you can look out for that. Probably also just gonna be called Blood in the Machine. And there's a book, Blood in the Machine. I had one good idea for a title and I'm sticking to it. So that's just gonna, I think, be it for me for the rest of my life. So it'll reduce confusion. At least there's that.
- [51:20]
Jason Keval
Brian, thanks for coming and we'll play us out.
- [51:24]
Brian Merchant
Thank you for having me on your fine podcast.
- [51:28]
Jason Keval
This episode of the 404 Media podcast podcast was produced and edited by Alyssa Midcalf. I'm Jason Keval. I'm here with Brian Merchant. We will be back with a regular episode in a few days.