It is the hubris of man that leads him to believe himself special enough to be the only creature capable of possessing intelligence. It is this same hubris that leads him to attempt to mimic that intelligence. In some cases, to attempt to surpass it.

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI for short) upended the paradigms that governed how our interactions work. Already a cesspool of misinformation, the internet was flooded with fake videos, quotes, and AI assistants; teachers became wary of student’s writing; more recently “defense” contractors have taken to the use of AI for policing. To get the obligatory, when speaking about AI, Greek Mythological reference out of the way, Pandora’s Box was opened.

Between the four largest companies in AI (Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google), there is a plan to invest upwards of $650 billion into AI in this calendar year, per Reuters. This is over twice the roughly $320 billion spent in 2025 by these same companies, per CNBC.

One thing, throughout this process, has become abundantly clear: the needs of tech are more important to companies and governments than those of humans. Evangelists such as Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel (Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who give real credence to the idea that the elite are lizard people) have propped up AI as both the savior and destructor of the world. As both Christ and Antichrist.

Backlash to this has led some to reevaluate the role of technology in their lives. It is not an uncommon sentiment online to see vocal opposition to technology from across the political spectrum. Neo-Luddites and those adjacent such as Heidegger, Ellul, Mumford and Kaczynski (his ramblings read as less and less inane) have experienced resurgences as people seek to understand the world that they live in. As Thomas Pynchon once asked in a 1984 essay for The New York Times Book Review, is it ok. to be a Luddite?

There is no clear answer to that, and the demands of our current time (or any time and place for that matter) differ from those of the past. Beyond that, there is much to question regarding what simple vocal opposition can do in the face of a world that will not slow down to interrogate its actions. At present, there are plans from each of the big 4 to build AI data centers in Indiana, possibly spending upwards of $25 billion. What time is there to slow down and consider the possible decline in water quality, the loss of farmland or the strain placed on an already struggling power grid?

What after appraisal of Israel’s use of AI to accelerate the destruction of Gaza? After recognizing Gaza as a testing ground for an expansion of that technology?

The most central aspect of Luddism (the aspect that prompts questions on whether or not it is or is not o.k. to practice) is a rejection of the prevailing social order. More than a disengagement from the system, it is an abject antagonism towards it. Destruction and outrage, however moral and justified, cannot sustain against the blunt force of capital. The Luddites were not able to stop the Industrial Revolution, and what is a counterrevolution in the face of progress?

Tech will always maintain the last word.

I asked Claude, a chatbot created by Anthropic, to write a concluding paragraph for this piece, this is what it said: “The question is not whether AI will continue its march — it will. Capital has never required our consent, and the $650 billion being funneled into this technology is not a conversation but a declaration. The more pressing question is one of complicity: what does it mean to live inside a machine built for profit and war while insisting that we are more than its byproduct? Pynchon’s question was never really about Luddism. It was about refusal — the small, stubborn, human act of refusing to mistake acceleration for progress. In the absence of governments willing to subordinate shareholder value to human welfare, that refusal may be the only honest position left. Not because it will stop anything, but because some things deserve to be said plainly, even into a void, even at the end.”