Are We the Handloom Weavers of the 21st Century?

Here we are again in a marvellous and terrifying age of new technology. Public displays of technological prowess become more spectacular with robots competing as Olympians and large language models solving stubborn maths problems.

It is little wonder that speculation is rife about how these technologies are redefining the future of humanity.

Scientists who engage with today's machinery question -- whether they are optimistic or pessimistic about humanity's prospects -- tend to approach it from a comparison of the capabilities of men and machines.

In doing so, Mary O'Sullivan will argue in her talk, they ignore crucial economic insights from earlier societies who grappled with machinery questions of their own.

Focusing on the canonical example of technology replacing humans - the devastating plight of the handloom weaver at the height of Britain's Industrial Revolution - she will show that power looms were widely diffused even though their technical capabilities fell far short of the skills of experienced weavers.

These weavers were displaced only when their cognitive and technical capacities had so diminished in value that less capable machines could suffice in their place.

Mary O'Sullivan will suggest that similar tendencies are underway as cognitive and technical capacities, long seen as distinctively human, are being undermined by a transformation of economic work.

Thus, our machinery question turns less on what machines can be taught to do as on what men and women are being encouraged to forget.