The technological revolution that no longer worries only factory workers, but also knowledge professionals. For decades, technology seemed to have an implicit pact with society. Machines would replace the most repetitive, physically demanding and dangerous jobs, while knowledge, creativity and the ability to reason would remain the exclusive domain of human beings. Studying, specializing and accumulating experience appeared to be the best insurance against economic change.
But that pact is beginning to crack. The rise of generative artificial intelligence is changing society’s perception of technology and, for the first time in many years, the debate is no longer focused solely on the opportunities it offers, but also on the risks it entails. More and more people are questioning a tool that, until recently, was presented as an almost inevitable synonym for progress.
This is no coincidence. According to a recent survey reported by the specialist outlet Futurism, public support for artificial intelligence is beginning to erode, mainly due to growing concerns about the destruction of skilled jobs, the spread of misinformation and the concentration of power in the hands of a handful of major technology companies. Fear itself is nothing new. What is new is who is feeling it.
When education is no longer a guarantee
The first major industrial revolutions transformed manual labour above all else. Mechanical looms replaced craftsmen, assembly lines reduced the need for skilled labour and robotics reshaped factories. Every innovation encountered resistance, but it also reinforced an idea that seemed beyond dispute: knowledge was far more difficult to automate than physical strength.
Artificial intelligence is now challenging that assumption. Large language models are already drafting contracts, writing software, producing financial reports, translating texts, creating illustrations, generating preliminary diagnoses and producing content that, until very recently, required years of education and professional experience. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, technology is no longer competing only with human muscle. It is competing with the human mind as well.
Those potentially affected are no longer limited to factory workers or warehouse employees. Lawyers, journalists, architects, consultants, financial analysts, software developers, teachers, graphic designers and translators are now also part of the equation. This is precisely what explains much of the recent shift in attitudes toward AI. Professional classes that for years viewed digitalisation as an opportunity are beginning to realise that they, too, may find themselves in direct competition with algorithms.
A fear with more than two centuries of history
This concern may appear entirely new, but economic history tells us otherwise.
Between 1811 and 1816, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, thousands of English textile craftsmen began destroying the mechanical looms spreading through the factories. That movement would become known as Luddism, inspired by the figure—probably legendary—of Ned Ludd.
For a long time, the Luddites have been portrayed as enemies of progress, incapable of understanding the benefits of mechanisation. Yet this interpretation is deeply unfair. Workers did not smash machines because they rejected technology itself, but because they believed the new production model condemned them to unemployment, devalued their skills and concentrated profits in the hands of factory owners. Their protest was not against machines. It was against the way progress was being organised.
From the loom to the algorithm
The differences between that world and ours are enormous, but so are the similarities.
The Luddites could physically see the machines replacing them. The loom occupied a specific place inside the factory and symbolised the transformation of their way of life. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, is invisible. It operates from data centres located thousands of miles away and can simultaneously reshape the work of a lawyer in Barcelona, a journalist in London or an architect in New York.
The profile of those affected has also changed. Two centuries ago, mechanisation primarily threatened manual skills. Today, it is intellectual work that finds itself competing with technology. That is why some economists and historians now speak of neo-Luddism—not to describe a war against AI, but to explain the re-emergence of the same underlying concern: the fear that a technological revolution may fundamentally alter the rules of the labour market.
This new form of Luddism does not express itself through the destruction of machines. Instead, it takes the form of calls for regulation, strikes by artists and creators, copyright lawsuits, debates over data ownership and growing concern about the future of many highly skilled professions.
Who will reap the benefits of progress?
Economic history shows that major technological revolutions tend to generate greater wealth, higher productivity and new opportunities for growth. It happened with the steam engine, electricity, computerisation and the Internet. Everything suggests that artificial intelligence will follow the same path. However, history also teaches us that the benefits of progress are never distributed automatically.
This is probably the point that most clearly connects nineteenth-century Luddism with today’s debate over artificial intelligence. English craftsmen did not oppose machines because they were against innovation. What they challenged was an economic model in which the gains produced by mechanisation were concentrated in the hands of factory owners, while workers alone bore the costs of the transformation.
Two centuries later, the question remains strikingly relevant. Artificial intelligence promises unprecedented gains in productivity, but it also raises fundamental questions about how this new wealth will be distributed. If an increasing share of intellectual work can be automated, who will capture the value once created by millions of professionals? The companies developing the largest AI models? The organisations that integrate them into their operations? Or will this new wave of productivity ultimately translate into greater prosperity for society as a whole?
This is far from a minor issue. Much of the unease surrounding artificial intelligence today does not stem from the technology itself, but from the perception that its benefits may once again become concentrated in the hands of a very small number of players, while the costs—professional retraining, downward pressure on wages and the disappearance of certain occupations—are borne by a much broader segment of society.
Perhaps, rather than witnessing a purely technological revolution, we are facing an old economic debate resurfacing with new tools. It is precisely this historical continuity that explains why, more than two centuries after Ned Ludd, the same question resonates once again: who will control the benefits of progress, and who will bear its costs?
The lesson of luddism
For almost two centuries, many highly skilled professionals believed that major technological revolutions mainly affected other people: weavers, miners and factory workers. Artificial intelligence is now shattering that perception. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, a significant part of the educated middle class is discovering that formal education is no longer an absolute safeguard against automation.
Perhaps this is the true novelty of our time. It is not that technology replaces people—that has happened repeatedly throughout history—but that it is now challenging professions that until recently seemed to belong exclusively to human talent.
For that reason, the debate over artificial intelligence should not be reduced to deciding whether we are for or against the technology itself. History shows that trying to stop progress is a losing battle. The real question is different: how can we ensure that the enormous productivity gains promised by this new technological revolution translate into greater shared prosperity, rather than an even greater concentration of wealth and power?
It is exactly the same question the Luddites were asking more than two hundred years ago. And judging by the debate surrounding artificial intelligence today, it may never have been more relevant.
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