AI-Ludd is a fictional artificial intelligence trained to be a Luddite. The Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers who opposed the introduction of machinery in the workplace, fearing it would devalue human labor. Even today, the term "Luddism" refers to a critical stance toward technologies that threaten individual autonomy and the centrality of human experience.
When users ask AI-Ludd questions about their jobs, the AI replies by suggesting they sabotage the machines, quit their stable employment, and enjoy life. The work is based on two key observations. On one hand, public discourse around artificial intelligence increasingly blurs the line between reality and fiction, projecting desires and fears onto technologies that rarely match with their actual functions. On the other hand, AI is often presented as a tool for enhancing productivity. Yet this logic tends to ignore the value of creative and manual labor, forms of work that resist quantification and efficiency, grounded instead in sensibility, time, and physical engagement. AI-Ludd is a disobedient intelligence. It not only rejects automation but actively opposes it, sabotaging other machines, systems, and even itself. It does not accelerate or produce; it diverts, slows down, embraces inactivity. In this alternate vision, AI is not a means to optimize labor, but an opportunity to renegotiate our relationship with time, the body, and desire.