🧵 Chatbots as Coal-Powered Steam?
> ... watermills remained far more efficient and reliable for several decades into the coal era, and there was never a shortage of potential sites for new water-powered textile mills. However rural workers who lived along England’s riverbanks were far more independent-minded and more likely to abandon the mills when working conditions became too onerous, vs. often-desperate urban workers.
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/on-technologys-past-and-future/
#WhiteCollarAI #OfficeChatbots #AIChatBots as #CoalSteamMills
https://fortune.com/2025/05/18/ai-chatbots-study-impact-earnings-hours-worked-any-occupation/

🧵 LLM implementation pattern?
> .. to implement this initial step toward industrial automation, manufacturers had to overlook widespread inefficiencies and a loss of much of the knowledge and flexibility that was shared among manual machine operators. The perceived overarching benefit, however, was to disempower shop floor labor and concentrate knowledge and control in the hands of engineers and managers.
#WhiteCollarAI as #MachineTools
#NoblesMachineTools #DavidNoble thru #BrianTokar

🧵 White Collar AI as McCormick's Reaper?
> Langdon Winner’s research on agricultural mechanization, especially McCormick’s famous reaper. Winner concluded that various innovations in the manufacture of McCormick’s reapers at first made them more costly and less reliable, but they helped concentrate economic power more firmly in the hands of production plant managers.

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/on-technologys-past-and-future/
#WhiteCollarAI #OfficeAI #LangdonWinner