Megan J. McArdle

And I'm sure he'd have asked, but how could a spinning jenny lead to all that?

And it wasn't just a spinning jenny.

It was an unprecedented wave of innovation after innovation.

Many of those innovations put people out of good jobs.

But collectively, they also made it possible for us to be in this room together or listening on the internet, rather than huddled by a smoky fire, knitting stockings to sell.

The mill owners couldn't have imagined what was coming, any more than Henry Ford understood that he was helping to speed along the sexual revolution by creating mobile love buggies for teenagers.

They were just trying to make a profit.

But we're the ones who profited the most.

So to return to where we started, yes, I am scared of AI.

I assume that the government is going to try to do something for displaced workers, maybe provide them job retraining.

But like the Luddites, I'm a human being working in a proud tradition.

I don't want a government handout.

I want the career that I have spent more than 20 years building.

And still, when I'm lying awake at night

wishing and maybe trying to figure out some way that I could stop this thing, or at least slow it down a little.

I remind myself, I try to remind myself, of all the reasons I shouldn't want that, even if I could.

I don't have any right to steal the future from our descendants, because I'm already living in someone else's future.

And it is literally better than they could have imagined.

Thank you.