The Biden administration recently issued an executive order regulating artificial intelligence. This partially reflects fear that AI will cause mass unemployment.

Such concern, however, is only the latest instance of misplaced fears surrounding technological change.

Speculation that technology would make humans redundant dates to Aristotle, who mused that laborers could be made obsolete by sufficiently complex tools.

During the Industrial Revolution, such fears were infamously revived as protestors (the Luddites) smashed textile machines to resist being displaced.