{"id":197670,"date":"2025-10-08T14:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T14:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197670\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T14:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T14:03:08","slug":"as-ai-gets-more-life-like-a-new-luddite-movement-is-taking-root","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197670\/","title":{"rendered":"As AI gets more life-like, a new Luddite movement is taking root"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n A version of this story appeared in CNN Business\u2019 Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

New York
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n At my local coffee shop a couple of weeks ago, I overheard one 20-something woman say to another: Could I ask, what kind of phone do you have?\n <\/p>\n

\n The other woman replied: Oh yeah, it\u2019s a Jelly Star\u2026\n <\/p>\n

\n I started Googling while they gabbed.\n <\/p>\n

\n The conversation was brief, but they talked about the phone the way you might when you compliment a stranger\u2019s boots: So cool, are they comfortable, where did you get them, I want a pair.\n <\/p>\n

\n Jelly Star is a credit-card size smartphone that runs on Android. It does all the things that feel required in modern life: emails, calls, texts, GPS. But the 3-inch screen is so tiny \u2014 about half the size of the average smartphone \u2014 there\u2019s almost no point in trying to stare at it for longer than a few seconds, according to fans on Reddit.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s too small to get addicted to, and using it even gives me a headache\u2014perfect for negative reinforcement,\u201d a commenter on r\/dumbphones, a subreddit that encourages members to \u201cjoin the revolution and enjoy the simple life.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n That revolution \u2014 more of a collective \u201cno thanks\u201d than a mass organized campaign \u2014 isn\u2019t limited to scaled-down phones.\n <\/p>\n

\n There is a genuine, Gen Z-driven Luddite renaissance building as some people reject the tech platforms that have clamored for our attention (and money) over the past two decades \u2014 a movement that seems to get stronger as those platforms, such as Instagram and TikTok, are flooded with increasingly sophisticated AI-generated content.\n <\/p>\n

\n The original Luddites were textile workers in rural 19th century England who rose up against the rise of automated machines that threatened them with joblessness and starvation. And while the term today is often lobbed as a kind of insult for someone who doesn\u2019t understand technology, the modern Luddites are redefining it.\n <\/p>\n

\n Like the Industrial Revolution-era insurgents, the new Luddites are not anti-technology but anti-exploitation, the tech journalist Brian Merchant<\/a> tells me. Far from being uninformed cranks, many of the people embracing Luddism grew up with smartphones and know all too well how enticing (and overwhelming) the technology can be.\n <\/p>\n

\n Last month, several dozen people gathered in New York for a \u201cLuddite Renaissance\u201d rally<\/a>. The Luddite Club, a nonprofit founded by a team of \u201cformer screenagers\u201d in Brooklyn, has expanded to more than 20 chapters<\/a> at high schools and colleges across the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n Dumbphone sales are surging<\/a>, my colleague Tom Page noted last week, citing research around screentime contributing to poor sleep and mental health, especially among children. This week, a Wall Street Journal article declared \u201cYoung People Are Falling in Love With Old Technology,\u201d<\/a> citing Gen Z\u2019s fondness for flip phones and point-and-shoot cameras. Vinyl, CDs and even cassette tapes<\/a> have made a comeback. The comedian Caleb Hearon<\/a>, 30, regularly riffs about how much he hates his phone: \u201cI turn it off, put it in a drawer, leave the house. I do that multiple days a week,\u201d he recently said in a podcast interview.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s been a slow burn, Merchant said, but \u201ca lot of people are just reaching the breaking point now.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI think it ultimately comes down to a frustration within with a profoundly undemocratic development and deployment of technology for profit,\u201d said Merchant, author of the book<\/a> and Substack<\/a> \u201cBlood in the Machine.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re not against the very idea of having a screen in your pocket \u2026 their gripe is \u2014 and it\u2019s a justified one \u2014 that it\u2019s filled with all of these addictive<\/a> and toxic apps<\/a> that are developed by Silicon Valley companies to serve a narrow set of interests.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n These days, we are all workers in the internet factory: We supply the images, write the copy, engage with the ads, promote the products. That labor sustains an inequitable tech economy in which a handful of companies, including Meta, Google and Amazon, rake in profit and enrich their shareholders. In return, consumers get a product designed to keep us scrolling.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s not to say those sites don\u2019t provide any value \u2014 it\u2019s nice seeing your friends\u2019 faces on their trips to Italy or crossing the finish line of their first marathon or getting married or whatever. But real-people content is a shrinking portion of the social media pie. Over the summer, the New Yorker\u2019s Kyle Chayka<\/a> argued we may be \u201cheading toward something like Posting Zero, a point at which normal people \u2014 the unprofessionalized, uncommodified, unrefined masses \u2014 stop sharing things on social media as they tire of the noise, the friction, and the exposure.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Without all of us normies posting anodyne updates about our breakfasts and workouts, \u201cthere will be only dry corporate marketing, AI-generated slop, and dreck from thirsty hustlers attempting to monetize a dwindling audience of voyeurs,\u201d Chayka wrote.\n <\/p>\n

\n Social media executives aren\u2019t shying away from that future.\n <\/p>\n

\n Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Meta laid out a vision of a future in which AI \u201cfriends\u201d outnumber our human companions. \u201cYou\u2019ll be scrolling through your feed, and there will be content that maybe looks like a Reel to start, but you can talk to it, or interact with it, and it talks back, or it changes what it\u2019s doing. \u2026That\u2019s all going to be AI.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n And that just might work, if working means keeping enough users hooked on the platform. But it\u2019s also possible that generative AI images and chatbots further blur the line between reality and misinformation, fueling what has already become a backlash against the invasiveness of tech<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf AI generated misinformation is just everywhere,\u201d Merchant said, \u201cit will make it that much easier to say, \u2018to hell with it\u2019 and just opt out stuff all together.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A version of this story appeared in CNN Business\u2019 Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-197670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}