Smashing the Machines in Portland Won’t Stop the Future
Smashing the Machines in Portland Won’t Stop the Future
Last week in Portland, Oregon, something happened that felt ripped from the history books. A reactionary response to society, technology, and the people associated with it. Something that, I hope, isn’t a sign of things to come, but given the state of things in the world, it might be.
Last week there was an AI networking event, the “AI Portland Summer Soirée”—something that I might have been interested in attending if I was in the area—to celebrate summer, connect with people, and enjoy the company of people who won’t roll their eyes when you talk about trying a new model in your local LLM. Networking events are a mainstay in tech. It’s where new companies are born. It’s where some of the most fundamental parts of the internet were discussed, even discovered. Unfortunately what sounded like a great event, didn’t end how people would have expected.
When everyone walked out at the end of the event, people found their cars vandalized, tires slashed, and anti-AI graffiti spray-painted across everything. The vandals left a manifesto behind decrying all the usual things: job losses, risk to humanity, etc. The same tropes that have been brought out with nearly every major technological advancement for 200 years. The world as we know it is ending because of industrialized weaving, assembly lines, radio, TV, the VCR, the internet, cell phones, and now AI and we have to stop it by any means necessary.
Of course my first reaction, like yours I imagine, is a simple and unequivocal one: This is wrong. Vandalism and violence are not the answer. Full stop. But beneath that anger, there’s a much more complicated story. It’s a story about changing technologies, about who gets a voice in shaping our future, and who is keeping the companies in check. There is no doubt, none, that we’re only seeing the beginning of the changes AI will bring to society and the world.
The Problem with Painting “Techies” with One Brush
The vandals made the lazy thinking mistake of painting everyone at an AI even with the same “they must all be smug AI tech bros drinking local beers and cocktails laughing at the people losing their jobs” with the same broad brush. Over-simplifying the issue is always the refuge of the radical. It’s this or that. Black or white, no gray.
Of course they were wrong.
Julie Scotland, a co-founder at Gravi AI, was supposed to be at the event but had to miss it for her daughter’s kindergarten orientation. She pointed out the profound irony of the attack:
“What makes this particularly upsetting is that many of the people targeted last night are the very ones working on Al ethics, policy reform, and ‘Al for good’ initiatives.”
These weren’t villains in a dystopian movie. According to Julie, the crowd included “average people concerned about their own job security, trying to understand what Al means for their future, alongside educators and builders actively working to shape more inclusive, less harmful Al development.”
Suzame Tong, who was at the event, described the gathering not as a corporate cabal, but as something that “almost feels more like a neighborhood potluck.” She reflected on the jarring end to the evening: “What began as a joyful evening last night with Portland’s Al community ended with a stark reminder of the tensions surrounding this technology.”
The people whose tires were slashed were the very people having the conversations the vandals claim they want to have—about bias, about ethics, about making this transition humane. Not to mention people with families to feed, bills to pay, and now hefty repair bills to deal with. I’m sure there might be a few cars that will need to be written off. What about the single parent who needs a car to get to and from work to feed their kids? What are they supposed to do? What about the freelancer who went to the event to help get some new clients because other work is drying up and things are looking grim. Or the person who did just lose their job and was hoping they might be able to connect with someone who is looking to hire a few people.
No, no. That’s too complicated, too nuanced for them to consider.
Maybe the worst part is, we’ve seen this pattern before and it didn’t end well for folks trying to prevent technological change.
Echoes of the Luddites (and Their Misunderstood Message)
In 19th-century England, textile workers smashed weaving looms to protest the Industrial Revolution. We use the term derived from their movement today, but maybe not connecting to where it came from—Luddite. The Luddites weren’t afraid of machines; they were afraid of what the machines, in the hands of unchecked factory owners, would do to their livelihoods, their families, and their communities. Their core message about the need for protections, for considering the societal impact of technology, should have been heeded—and we can trace a lot of our current woes to their concerns no taken seriously enough.
The Luddites’ mistake, however, was their method. Smashing the looms didn’t stop industrialization. It just made them criminals and allowed the powerful to dismiss their very legitimate concerns as the ravings of a violent fringe. Manifestos and slashed tires do the same thing; they make it easy to dismiss their message because they thought breaking the law was the right way to get their message out.
This is Already Personal for All of Us
The thing is, AI has already changed everything. It’s not some far-off concept. We’re seeing things like entry level jobs in marketing, finance, etc are drying up because who needs a junior employee when an AI can do the job better. Of course when we all need “experienced” people to fill roles, we’re going to find a lack of folks to hire. The practice of marketing—content marketing especially—has been upended. How that will shake out, I have no idea. Writing and content creation, my bread and butter for years, is in the midst of tremendous upheaval. I’ve had to pivot my entire career toward AI enablement and strategy because the ground has shifted under my feet. Getting a job, especially as part of Gen X, in content, marketing, and digital spaces seems nigh impossible.
This pivot is a classic double-edged sword. I’m learning incredible new AI skills. Learning to prompt AI effectively has sharpened my critical thinking in ways I never expected. It’s opened new doors and opportunities for me, but I also feel the pain and anxiety rippling through my professional community. I see talented colleagues struggling like me, and I’m deeply suspicious of the AI-powered hiring tools that seem to be creating more bias, not less. I’m pretty sure my own resume has been tossed into the digital dustbin by an algorithm filtering for age or impossibly specific keywords.
The anxiety is real. The disruption is real. The changes are profound. But the answer can’t be to burn it all down. We can’t put the AI genie back in the bottle, we’re way past that.
The Only Way Out is Through (With Conversation, Not Crowbars)
Let’s be brutally honest: Unchecked AI, driven solely by corporate greed, is a terrifying prospect. We’ve all seen the reports about Meta’s AI chatbot being allowed to say things truly, truly disturbing. A stark reminder that companies—Meta especially—left to their own devices, will prioritize profit over people.
This is precisely why we need more conversation, not less. We need robust, public, and sometimes difficult discussions. We need to elevate the work of people who are digging into the messy details, fromChristopher Penn and Katie Robbert’s work on inherent model bias and Christopher’s excellent piece on ethics and AI to Paul Chaney’s thinking on the broader societal implications of AI. We need to talk these things out. We need to answer tough questions. And, yeah, we might need to rein in a few companies.
What happened in Portland was born of powerlessness, hopelessness, and fear. As Julie Scotland said, “When people feel their voices don’t matter in major decisions affecting their lives, some will choose destructive paths over constructive ones.”
We can’t afford to let people on the extremes shut down the conversation. We need to keep it out in the open, with everyone at the table. We can’t navigate this monumental shift by smashing the compass, breaking the looms, or shutting down the servers. We have to keep talking. And challenging. And looking forward, not back.
—
Join me for next hands-on workshop
Coming up on September 10th I’m holding my next hands-on workshop on using AI—constructively—for content marketing.
Get hands-on with AI and walk away with a Brand Voice Guide, Comprehensive Content Audit, a Custom Content Calendar, all the prompts we used, and plus an ebook with my favorite prompts for marketers.
?In my AI-Powered Content Workshop, you’ll get:
- A preliminary content audit of your website (done for you, before the workshop)
- Expert-crafted AI prompts to create a comprehensive content audit and brand voice guide to fast-track your strategy.
- Live, guided session to build your core content assets and learn how to write prompts like a pro.
?”Few content marketers engage with AI as thoughtfully as Tris. In this workshop, he shares impactful prompts that he spent months refining and gives you the space to learn by applying them. You’ll leave with shortcuts you can use to produce meaningful drafts of content strategy documents.” —Riviera Lev-Aviv, Principal at RL Content Strategy & Service
“This workshop answered so many questions for me as a content marketer looking to keep up with current trends and create efficiencies. Tris is an amazing facilitator; he interacted with each of us during this hands-on workshop to ensure we were getting value from the information and understood clearly how we can leverage AI platforms as partners in our work.. We also received materials to get us started. I will be recommending this workshop to my network.” — Alix Crawley