Megan J. McArdle

Well, I gather I'm not the only one who spends a lot of time thinking about AI these days.

And by think, I mean panic.

I'm not even worried about the doomsday scenarios, because I have no way to assess those.

I just think about what's going to happen to jobs, because even if we solve the AI safety problem, it's still going to displace a lot of workers, maybe including me.

Twenty years ago, I decided to take my very expensive MBA and use it to become a journalist.

That decision did not have what we MBAs like to call a positive expected cash flow.

When I was interviewing for a job at The Economist, one of the interviewers actually just asked me, why are you doing this?

I told him, I only have so much time on this planet, and I want to spend it doing something that matters.

And also, by the way, something I really, really, really love to do.

I got lucky, and it worked out.

Today, I'm a columnist at The Washington Post.

But every day, AI seems to get better and better at writing competent prose, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do if typing words in a row stops being a semi-profitable occupation.

Now, I'm a libertarian columnist, which means I believe in progress and creative destruction.

But here's something I also believe.

The Luddites had a point.

Look, you don't normally hear libertarians praising Luddites, so let me explain.

Today, Luddite's a broad-spectrum term for technophobes.

But the real Luddites weren't your mom using a landline instead of a cell phone or sending you Hallmark cards with little words underlined.

They were skilled artisans who made handcrafted textiles in an era when everyone wore lovingly handcrafted textiles.

Then mechanized mill owners started underpricing them using some of the most cutting-edge technology of their day, like spinning jennies that could spin thread at record speeds.