How the Bad Use of Tech Closed the Southern Mind
Another America 250 Reflection and a Caution for the Age of AI
Historical inflection points involving transformative technology are moral tests, not just economic ones — and the outcome depends on the character of those who control the technology, not the technology itself.
How we mishandled the cotton gin was a failure to cultivate a mindful approach to technology. We should learn from our mistakes in how we handle the future of AI and advanced robotics.
The first Americans made too many optimistic assumptions about the political economy of the new nation. They assumed slavery would just go away because it was a new age and it was an institution of the past that seemed inefficient. Then we assumed technology would solve the issue.
We are at a historic turning point as significant as the first Industrial Revolution. One of the major components of that revolution in the United States was Eli Whitney’s 1793 development and promotion of the cotton gin. This technology possessed the potential to solve the American demand for captive African labor. Because one laborer could suddenly process cotton seeds at a minimum of ten times the previous speed, the economics of the system could theoretically have been reoriented away from slavery. Profits could have increased while sharing the wealth with freed Africans as hired workers, providing a technological exit from an inherently oppressive system. If they were not going to end slavery because it was wrong, because they feared losing their ill-gotten gains, then the cotton gin was an out. This is not simply a counterfactual; rather, contemporaries assumed the opposite of what happened: many people at the time believed the cotton gin would reduce the need for enslaved people. That expectation was not simply naive; rather, they missed where the labor bottleneck shifted. The gin only solved the seed separation problem. Whitney had hoped his invention would reduce the labor needed to process cotton but there was a prior process. Picking. So, the cotton gin increased the incentive for more laborers to harvest it, since picking — not ginning — was now the limit on what you could do. Mechanical harvesters would not exist until the 1930s. So, the desire for slave labor exploded. Slaveholders became wealthier, more powerful, and absolutely determined to prevent any limitations on their control of the enslaved workforce.
Will AI unleash greater productivity and shared wealth, or deepen inequality and empower an oligarchy surveilling and controlling the rest of society? The generative systems currently being built possess the capacity to accelerate human capability, democratize access to knowledge, force institutions to become more responsive, and amplify talents across all backgrounds. Alternatively, they can make already-unequal systems flawlessly exploitative and nearly impossible to challenge. This trajectory will not be decided by the technology itself. The choice should not be left exclusively to the people and organizations controlling its development. Society should challenge their values, judgment, and intentionality.
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