person

Brian Merchant

Tech writer; 'Blood in the Machine' author

Independent tech writer; author of 'Blood in the Machine' (2023) on the original Luddites, with explicit parallels to AI-era labour disruption. Former LA Times tech columnist.

current Writer, Independent

homepage @bcmerchant

Strategy positions

Near-term harms firstendorses

Documented present harms outweigh speculative existential narratives

Argues AI's labour effects are following a historical pattern that the original Luddites resisted intelligently; calls for organized labor responses rather than passive acceptance.

The Luddites were not against technology. They were against being immiserated by it. The pattern repeats with AI, and so should the resistance.

❧ bookBlood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech· Little, Brown· 2023· faithful paraphrase

Closest strategy neighbours

by jaccard overlap

Other people whose strategy tags overlap with Brian Merchant's. Overlap is on tag identity, not stance; opposites can show up if they reference the same tags.

Adam Grant
shared 1 · J=1.00
Wharton organizational psychologist
Anna Lauren Hoffmann
shared 1 · J=1.00
UW iSchool; 'data violence' theorist
Anton Korinek
shared 1 · J=1.00
UVA economist; AI and inequality
Clay Shirky
shared 1 · J=1.00
NYU emeritus; 'Here Comes Everybody', 'Cognitive Surplus'
Cynthia Breazeal
shared 1 · J=1.00
MIT Media Lab; social robotics; founder Jibo
Daniel Susskind
shared 1 · J=1.00
Oxford / King's College London; AI and work economist

Record last updated 2026-04-25.