Folk memories can be powerful things. Perhaps the most visceral shared image we have of technology’s impact on jobs involves the Luddites of 19th-century England: skilled workers abruptly turfed out of their jobs, who returned under cover of night to destroy the machines that displaced them.
Little wonder that, as our latest machine age has dawned, the question on many people’s lips has been “Will AI steal my job?” But the Luddites’ story might have led us to worry about the wrong thing.