Comment on Most Americans think AI won’t improve their lives, survey says

ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  More like asking the slaves about productivity advances in slavery. “Nothing good will come of it”.

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  • CarnivorousCouch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    See also; the cotton gin.

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    • MangoCats@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The cotton gin has been used as an argument for why slavery finally became unacceptable. Until then society “needed” slaves to do the work, but with the cotton gin and other automations the costs of slavery started becoming higher than the value.

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      • CarnivorousCouch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        My understanding is that the cotton gin led to more slavery as cotton production became more profitable. The machine could process cotton but not pick it, so more hands were needed for field work.

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        The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations that used black slave labor, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy.[35] While it took a single laborer about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day.[36] The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850."

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• MangoCats@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Al Gore’s family thought that the political tide was turning against it, so they gave up tobacco farming in the late 1980s - and focused on politics.

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