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https://theconversation.com/what-2-000-years-of-chinese-history-reveals-about-todays-ai-driven-technology-panic-and-the-future-of-inequality-254505>
"In the sweltering summer of AD18, a desperate chant echoed across China’s
sun-scorched plains: “Heaven has gone blind!” Thousands of starving farmers,
their faces smeared with ox blood, marched toward the opulent vaults held by
the Han dynasty’s elite rulers.
As recorded in the ancient text
Han Shu (book of Han), these farmers’
calloused hands held bamboo scrolls – ancient “tweets” accusing the bureaucrats
of hoarding grain while the farmers’ children gnawed tree bark. The rebellion’s
firebrand warlord leader, Chong Fan, roared: “Drain the paddies!”
Within weeks, the Red Eyebrows, as the protesters became known, had toppled
local regimes, raided granaries and – for a fleeting moment – shattered the
empire’s rigid hierarchy.
The Han dynasty of China (202BC-AD220) was one of the most developed
civilisations of its time, alongside the Roman empire. Its development of
cheaper and sharper iron ploughs enabled the gathering of unprecedented
harvests of grain.
But instead of uplifting the farmers, this technological revolution gave rise
to agrarian oligarchs who hired ever-more officials to govern their expanding
empire. Soon, bureaucrats earned 30 times more than those tilling the soil.
And when droughts struck, the farmers and their families starved while the
empire’s elites maintained their opulence. As a famous poem from the subsequent
Tang dynasty put it: “While meat and wine go to waste behind vermilion gates,
the bones of the frozen dead lie by the roadside.”
Two millennia later, the role of technology in increasing inequality around the
world remains a major political and societal issue. AI-driven “technology
panic” – exacerbated by the disruptive efforts of Donald Trump’s new
administration in the US – gives the feeling that everything has been upended.
New tech is destroying old certainties; populist revolt is shredding the
political consensus.
And yet, as we stand at the edge of this technological cliff, seemingly peering
into a future of AI-induced job apocalypses, history whispers: “Calm down.
You’ve been here before.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
