All the while, those who profited from the cotton gin painted the invention as one that made the enslaved happier. “I say it boldly, there is not a happier, more contented race upon the face of the earth,” said one South Carolina congressman. These two features of technology revolutions—their promise to deliver progress and their tendency instead to reverse it for people out of power, especially the most vulnerable—are perhaps truer than ever for the moment we now find ourselves in with artificial intelligence.
