Digital Resistance Against the Lasting Manipulation of Capitalism: AI, Luddite Rebellion, and the Haunted Future of Cyberpunk

This paper examines the complex relationship between artificial intelligence, labour, and resistance amidst contemporary capitalism. Big Tech presents AI as revolutionary innovation, yet this narrative obscures its function in maintaining growth and preventing alternative economic forms from emerging. Through the lens of "enshittification," we observe a strategic shift toward AI deployment despite its beta state of development, threatening workers' livelihoods. This tension echoes historical patterns of technological implementation and resistance, exemplified by the Luddite movement whose meaning elites have successfully corrupted over time. The Luddites, organised under the mythical figurehead Ned Ludd (a Robin Hood-esque figure), recognised technological change as inevitable but fought to manage its pace to prevent further exploitation, ultimately winning meaningful concessions. Technology can improve working conditions, but only when workers maintain control over implementation. The contemporary work-from-home debate reveals how management resistance often centres on control rather than technological capability. While widespread AI protests remain limited, emerging forms of Electronic Civil Disobedience and anti-corporate demonstrations signal growing resistance. The cyberpunk genre illuminates this state by continuing to depict alternative futures haunted by recycled pasts, highlighting a state of permacrisis where historical alternatives increasingly represent potential futures obscured by futurist – yet aesthetically dated – technology that facilitates control by corporations.