Episode Details

People are worried that AI will automate their jobs. Yet Brian Merchant has interviewed hundreds of workers disrupted by AI, and what he sees isn’t a technological revolution but a centuries-old power struggle: bosses wielding new tech as leverage to deskill and destabilize workers.

Merchant is a tech journalist and critic whose book, Blood in the Machine, gives a sympathetic history of the original Luddites. He joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to explain what 19th century English craftsmen can tell us about AI, why he doesn’t lose sleep over Chinese models, and how to have a better industrial revolution.

Host: 

Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman 

Guest: 

Brian Merchant: https://x.com/bcmerchant