AI fear is the historically wrong pattern: the viral article that answers the panic
Connor Boyack answers Matt Shumer's viral article with an X Article drawing 2.4M views: AI fear follows the historically wrong pattern (Bastiat, Queen Elizabeth, Luddites, ATMs) — the economy is a garden, not a pie.
Highlights
- Viral response to Matt Shumer's article: AI fear is the historically wrong pattern — uses Bastiat's insight ('the seen and the unseen') with 2.4M views
- Queen Elizabeth I refused the knitting machine in 1589 fearing it would ruin knitters — and the machine became the engine of the Industrial Revolution
- The 'fixed-pie delusion': the economy is not a pie, it's a garden — and technology is rain. ATMs and barcode scanners created more jobs, not fewer
- The 'this time is different' objection has the same argument from the 1960s (machines doing mental work) — and it was wrong then too
While Matt Shumer's article — 'Something Big Is Happening' — went viral predicting AI will eliminate half of office jobs, Connor Boyack wrote one of the most-read responses on X: 'AI isn't coming for your future. Fear is.'
The article uses the insight of French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1850) — 'the seen and the unseen' — to show that AI fear follows the same pattern that has always been wrong in history. With 2.4 million views, it became the antidote shared by those wanting to counter the panic.
The seen and the unseen
Bastiat: 'a bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen'. When a technology arrives, the visible effects (automated work) are tangible and emotional — that's why panic articles go viral.
The unseen effects — the new industries, the businesses that only exist because costs dropped — have no human face. But 'invisibility is not the same as nonexistence'.
The historical pattern
In 1589, Queen Elizabeth I refused William Lee's knitting machine, fearing it would ruin hand knitters. Lee died poor in France — but the machine became the engine of the Industrial Revolution and England grew wealthier than ever.
The Luddites smashed looms in 1811 and were crushed; the textile industry exploded. In the 1960s, automation panic led President Johnson to form a commission — then came the postwar boom. When ATMs arrived, they predicted the end of bank tellers — and teller employment grew (from 485K to 527K between 1985 and 2002).
The fixed-pie delusion
Boyack diagnoses the cognitive error: the 'fixed-pie delusion' — the belief that the economy is a zero-sum game, that there's a fixed amount of work. 'The economy is not a pie. It's a garden. And technology is rain.'
Every technology expanded the pie: the car created suburbs, highways, motels, insurance; the internet created e-commerce, the content creator, the data scientist — jobs that didn't exist in 1995.
But this time?
The author faces the strongest objection: 'but AI automates thought, not just physical labor'. Yes — AI is different in speed and breadth. But it's not different in the essential: it's still a tool.
'Every piece of evidence from every technological shift in the last 500 years says no' — AI won't shrink meaningful human work. The burden of proof is on the pessimists.
What to do
The practical recipe: use the tools today (the gap between people who talk about AI and people who use it daily is enormous), think 'with' instead of 'instead of', and accept that the advantage of learning early is the biggest in the market.
'The people who will struggle aren't the ones whose jobs change — it's the ones who refuse to change with them.' Like modern-day hand knitters, insisting the old way is the only way, while the future assembles itself around them.