Stop saying that AI is just a tool and it only matters how it is used

As I understand it, in America "it's just a tool" is shorthand for "guns should be regulated like hammers, i.e. barely at all, responsibility lies with the user not those who make, market and sell it"

Needless to say a lot of people disagree with that, because of the shootings. And internationally, a lot of societies regulate guns a great deal.

I'm not saying this to steer the conversation towards gun control, or to compare AI use to killing. Rather, I'm saying that the conversation here so far has has been confused because people have different ideas of what "it's just a tool" means, so they're talking at cross purposes.

To some it's an obvious statement of fact; almost everything man-made is a tool, AI is a tool like a pair of shoes or a guitar is a tool.

To others it's a statement that corporations should be held blameless, and access is a moral right that shoudn't be limited on consequentialist grounds.

One of the most salient examples of this attitude is how the sub-field of the philosophy of technology is basically ignored by all technologists.

“Why should doers care what thinkers think,” you might wonder? Well, because they might have important insights that you, as a practitioner, aren’t immediately aware of.

The medical profession pays a lot of attention to bioethics and cares what philosophers think about issues like abortion, patient end-of-life rights, etc. Scientists care about the ethics of using test subjects. And so on.

But when it comes to technology and business, the attitude is just, “not my problem - there’s too much money and cool stuff to make.”

At the end of the day, there is just too much money, power, and knowledge at stake for people to stop and think seriously about the tech they’re building.

I'm of the opinion that it can be a tool if used as one, but that most people are currently interested in experimenting with various sci-fi visions. I don't ascribe any emotion or judgment to that, either. We should be doing the things we're excited to do if it doesn't cause too much harm.

There are boring and reliable uses for these things, but then the wins are smaller, so they're not as worth talking about. We all want to say something insightful about the current topic of discussion, and per usual some of the worst behavior gets the most attention.

To add context to what I'm proposing, I think they're good for dealing with issues of scale:

1. search dense files for a precise thing

2. refactor from a "bad way" to a "good way"

3. generate short (<200 line) scripts *

4. getting started with third party SDKs *

5. generate alternative procedures/approaches *

The asterisks denote potentially faulty usage. Short scripts are great to have roughly automated, but as ever the risk with these things has been that they might grow into programs, and that's a poor foundation to build on. This is similar to my rationale with generating example code for unfamiliar SDKs; sometimes usage is not as simple as most guides on the internet, which means you get a sub-par result from the LLM. I think this is pretty much the case with things like win32 or AppKit programming in C. As for the final point, you've pretty much got to be an expert to avoid going through the trouble of entertaining poor suggestions; I find this to be the primary failure-mode of LLMs, they can waste your time.

It seems the author is instead arguing that we should say that AI is a destructive tool and we should not use it.

I was hoping the article would not label it purely good or bad, but 1) highlight that AI is not just a tool but a very powerful tool and 2) and therefore it very much matters how we all use it and how it uses us.

In this framing, we can see the things where it helps and hurts us and society and many levels at various intensities.

The article mostly just seemed to say how bad it was, and I don't think being critical of a new tool means to only see how it harms us but rather to see the potential full range of impacts.

> But artificial intelligence, far more than any tool we’ve ever created, intends us not just to sit forward and behave, but to cease to think critically, to cease to imagine, and, most temptingly, to cease to feel struggle and pain.

If I don't think critically, AI causes me to feel struggle and pain.

I've read "amusing ourselves to death" and there the author also criticises the idea that new technologies are "just tools".

The invention of the telegraph changed how information is traded and the contents of newspapers, the invention of the TV changed politics, and so on.

The medium shapes the message and induces behaviours from us. We never thought about wanting to promt chatgpt, or watch people doing sports on a screen. But the possibility of doing these things makes us change.

LLMs obviously have and will continue shaping the world, and I am also afraid that it will create a worse future than the one that we had until now.

I think deployment should slow down and research should be financed and diversified.

Attempting to command well-meaning people to “stop doing X” as though you’re some sort of dictatorial authority is not only rude, but it’s also ineffective. I get it, it’s a spicy hook, but the effect turns quickly against you.

If you find yourself wanting to write like this, I recommend reconsidering. Persuade them instead.

I find it hard to see AI in a positive light when it is the root cause behind my friends not being able to afford gaming pcs and consoles, every thing is getting more expensive. I use it at work (because it is mandatory) and objectively speaking it has helped me, but the negative effects are hard to ignore.

Academics seem to like saying that considering any tool or technology to be value neutral, is naive.

And sure, technology choices have plenty of second order effects. Stopping any analysis at just how you are directly using the tool is probably insufficient.

At the same time, i still think that is part of how we use a tool. Society's choices about a tool (or even the choice to ban a tool) is still a part of how we use the tool and not instrinsic to the tool. I feel it all comes back to how we decide to use it. We can use nuclear technologies to treat diseases, power our cities, or we can use it to bomb places. We can chose to regulate the waste appropriately or not. Etc.

When i say things like its just a tool and it matters how you use it, i am claiming it is not inherently good or evil. It can have good or evil (or both) effects depending on how individuals use it and how society regulates it.

I have yet to hear a compelling counter example.

Are there upsides to using AI? Yes. Are there downsides? Definitely yes. And the problem is that most people ignore these downsides. Either due to ignorance, or because they got too used to using AI that they don't want to go back. AI is not just a tool, but a mechanism for dehumanization. Not because it replaces humans, but because it replaces human interactions, which have made us so successful as a species.

I think the environmental aspect is interesting and worth discussing. Around the offices the common joke is that people will "just burn down a piece of the rainforest" when they fire up their AI to solve some complex problem. Which certainly isn't what the world needs right now, and you can't have the "tool" without also the massive water consumption in a world where not everyone has access to clean water. Though as the fatalism in the burning down the rainforest implies, people around here have sort of accepted that the world is going to get hot.

On the other hand. If we apply the same sort of fatalism to AI, then we can expect AI to lead to civil uprising and a world which will probably be a lot more sustainable once most of us are dead.

I don't think the automation is any different from what we've seen the past 150 years. Except that perhaps this time AI is the tool which is actually going to do to the office what the assembly line did to the factory.

The “just a tool” argument was doomed from the start. Many tools are heavily regulated. Meds, drugs or guns are only a few of the most controversial examples.

I’m not saying we should treat AI as one of the above; I’m saying that regulation is common and can be beneficial.

Note that commenters here generally praise regulators when eg smartphones are banned at schools.

It's still not obvious that AI is uniquely environmentally destructive compared to some other "non-essential" industries, and it gets even less obvious when that's weighed against its current and potential benefits. Where the datacenters are built could probably be better regulated but that issue isn't inherent to the technology.

I think all issues regarding intellectual property rights actually fall under automation, even if everyone could stop their works from being fed to AI, enough public domain/open source works will be used, and enough people will license/donate their work for AI training for us to eventually get to the same point, it would just take longer, everything would be ethically sourced and people whose jobs are getting automated would still be unhappy.

The only real problem is the consolidation of wealth and power, everything else feels like a cope or a distraction.

I don't buy the argumentation.

Am I not allowed to say that hammer is just a tool and it matters how you use it? Because it makes all classic sculpture art meaningless? No it doesn't.

The "car is just a tool" doesn't make oil waste problem any less problematic.

I am one of those people who say AI is just a tool and it matters how you use it. But also, GCC/Clang/Rust are just tools and it matters how you use them. Your mouth is a tool and it matters how you use it. When thinking about ANY tool you should think about the best way to use it.

But for AI specifically this saying is most important, because a lot of people treat AI as another person. "He's like a junior employee" is what I've heard in my company on meetings. It's not a he, it's not a junior, it's not an employee. It's a tool!

There is another platitude people spout on the matter. "Technology is not neutral." Usually without elaborating. Any correct statement can become a thought eliminating cliche over time.

"AI is just a tool" is meant as a counterpoint to AI producing slop [1]. It isnt that there aren't ethical/societal implications with it as with everything we do in society.

[1] If you take the slop and manually fix/improve/verify it to production value it can be immensely valuable.

Humans are the tool, the weapon, and the strategy. Everything else is an accessory and should be treated as such.

AI is just a tool and it not even matters how you use it.

Ngl I had to stop reading part way through. I’m no AI spokesperson, but the opinion expressed here is..

> “insultingly naive”, “overly simplistic”, “immature and self absorbed”

..exactly what I would expect from someone partly or majority through a PhD about tools. I like tools, their design, creation, and deployment more than average (though probably less than the author), but you need to come up for air, man.

Your interpretation of that phrase is oddly specific, highly esoteric, and completely different from EVERYONE not doing a PhD on tools.

> AI is just a tool

That word “just” seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting for you. This sentiment is not intended to downplay the importance of tools on society. The generally understood intent of this phrase is to quell the current hysterics and to reassure anyone unfamiliar with the term _back propagation_ that AI, in fact, is neither alive nor sentient (in the sci-fi sense), and that it is “just” statistical modeling. Do not mystify the technology.

> a car/hammer is just a tool

While these are unanimously considered tools, I could entertain a long discussion and the “particular specialness” of tools and things that are inherently dynamical systems.

> what prototyping _should_ be about

The huge majority of the rest of your rant (or what I read of it) is awfully presumptuous and weirdly confrontational. Who can say what prototyping _should_ be? You of many people should understand that the creation and use of tools is contextual, sentimental, highly personal, intimate even.

> “But artificial intelligence… intends us not just to sit forward

From the first part of “The phrase”… AI is inanimate. Humans DO tend to anthropomorphize, and the whole point of saying “it’s just tool” is to remind people that… inanimate things don’t have an intent!

> our tools are using us

I find this notion somewhat trite. “The tail wagging the dog”. I’m not arguing that we aren’t impacted by the tools we use nor that the use and proliferation of AI is not impacting society, but it takes a PhD level of mental gymnastics to push that concept as far as you have in your rant.

The important takeaway though, is that you are a human, with agency and autonomy.

> it only matters how you use it

The implication of “How you use it” is that YOU GET TO CHOOSE. what you think, how you think, “how you use it”™, and even whether you use it! The choice is yours.

I don’t myself have a PhD, but seriously, do yourself a favor and come up for air. Read the parable of “The Empty Boat”.

it is not a tool.

I expected to find the following techno-critic arguments in this blog post, but did not really find them. Here they are, Hacker News!

[Tools do not exist in the void but in a society]. You can't study tools without studying the context that created it. Some tools work in some society, some others don't. One example, IIRC, are Ski-Doo with some native population that have Potlatch-like practices. Some anthropologist gave them Ski-Doo but you have to sacrifice something precious to give back, and soon they had to be burnt. In our society, anything expensive that require maintenance and repair is a bad fit as both "don't have the time" and the skills. We prefer "disposable" objects at the cost we know. That argument alone also explain why if both Switzerland and USA have the same amount of guns per inhabitant, they are less gun murder in Switzerland than in USA: different societies, with different culture, with different level of poverty, with different actors, etc.

[Tools create potentials, society may realize them]. As hackers, we often like to create new potentials (eg. with Bluesky ATProto, or the anonymous Vuvuzela chat, etc.). We also envisioned that with electricity, then with 3D printing, that people would build many objects of their daily life directly at home. But, from all the created technologies, some potentials are realized, some not. Community Memory, a San-Fransisco pre-Internet electronic board, wrote that more often the potentials that favor people in power in our society are realized. That's Palantir - strong - business model.

[Tools convey intentions]. I said above that tools create potentials. These potentials are not limited to what the tool actually is, but it should encompass all the micro-choices made by ones creating it. To illustrate this idea, take a knife. Knife designed to cook on one side, and knife designed for hunting in the other side, do not look the same. Youtube, by not displaying a big bar telling you how much you already uploaded to their server convey the idea of an infinite storage space, etc. Additionally to the raw utility of your tool, you can convey ideas, intentions, suggestion, affordance, either consciously or unconsciously. Back to guns in Switzerland & USA, both how people get the gun, what are the narrative, what the guns look like, whether or not you personalize it, etc. has a huge impact too.

[Our tools maximize efficiency at the expense of everything else]. Efficiency, in this case, could be defined as reaching a specific goal, in a stable & defined context. The critics of efficiency improvement are multiple: often, what really matter is to reach an acceptable threshold on many many different goals. Additionally, most efficiency gain make the process more and more dependent of a stable defined context, each micro-change in the environment and the whole tool / production chain is disrupted. It could be summarized as the opposition between "industry" and "craft". It's also one argument of the luddite: they also had tools to build cloth, that were less optimized in term of speed to build a cloth, and harder to master. But on other goals, that were not considered at that time, like quality, they were better. They thought the better quality of their cloth will save them, when people will find how poor quality are the cloths made by the new automated machine. But it did not happen. Still, from a French perspective, crafts still exist there; it's what luxury brand sells, because rich people know how much better they are. William Morris experimented and published a lot on these topics, it's an interesting reference.

With the 4 ideas (tools do not exist in the void, tools create only potentials, tools convey intentions, we build tools to maximize efficiency only), I think we have some basis to build a stimulating critic of both AI, cars, and knife. But this part is left as an exercise for the reader :-)

People interested in these topics may read Ivan Illich, André Gorz, or Jacques Ellul.

>Even a hammer, made of wood and iron, requires trees to be cut down and earth to be mined up. A simple hammer requires laws to be written about fair treatment of workers in multiple industries, sustainability of various biological and geological environments, and regulation about the sale and use of the hammer.

Well ... too bad that blacksmiths didn't have access to this amazing tools before those laws and regulations were put in place. A hammer doesn't need all these thing. The iron law of bureaucracy needs them.

When I read articles like this - what I observe is mostly rage born from the fear that the core of their identity - aka being smart in the general vague non threatening and non offensive way is rapidly depreciating asset.

Right. AI is a tool that helps some people "make their situation better." I don't believe technology is value neutral either.

Say a tractor does the work of ten farmers, and the farm owner lays off those ten farmers. Is that the tractor's fault? It's just the farm owner's fault. But we usually say the tractor took the ten farmers' jobs, because the farm owner trusted the productivity gain and made the cuts. That's the real point.

I agree AI has that same dynamic, but I'd argue that people who write this kind of thing tend to come from the establishment. Just look at their background.

People treat "open source" as if it's inherently good. But honestly, they don't realize how open source can actually work in a pretty vicious way for non Anglophone countries. Do you know why? For people whose access to knowledge is limited by the English language, it's hard to sell software that offers less value than the open source stuff the Anglosphere gives away "for free." Now think about it. Can a developing country really produce that same kind of elite mental model?

Open source does have a positive impact in the Anglosphere, sure. But put another way, that's for the people inside the castle. For the people outside the walls, it acts more like a high barrier. So this, right here, is exactly the kind of thing that changes depending on where you stand.

In places that are ten or twenty years behind in technology, do you really think they can produce technology that surpasses Anglophone open source? At that point, learning English itself becomes a privilege, and that's where the technological asymmetry comes in. And the thing is, learning English in a developing country is expensive.

In that sense, AI actually has a more egalitarian side to it. That's why I find this kind of professorial binary thinking so naive. Whether using it is evil or good depends entirely on where you're standing. When a professor tells everyone else not to use it, it just looks like a "this is about my own livelihood" problem to me.

The entire culture of programming and IT is Anglophone. And to even get a proper understanding, you have to read academic papers. To really use Rust properly, you need to deeply understand polymorphism, starting from ad hoc and going from there. Do you know how much time it takes to really internalize all that? The starting line is different, so you can never catch up. In that sense, AI is an asymmetric tool.

It feels like people born on third base are saying, "What's so hard about getting to home plate?" I have no problem with people projecting their own emotional lines onto tools and creating echo chambers. But this logic that only human made work is inherently good, I just find that hard to understand.

This right here is the hypocrisy of the struggle that the establishment loves to celebrate. Some people can afford to stand on stage and fight the good fight, but others aren't allowed that luxury.

To the person writing that, technology might feel like oppression. But to someone else, it's liberation.

Honestly, what I find hard to understand about this piece is that it completely fails to recognize that what counts as a meaningful struggle is determined by your social and cultural position. Their worldview is just narrow. A person's institutional position shapes what they see as human labor and what they see as automatable labor. That's purely a matter of where you stand.

The struggle for survival isn't romantic, not the way the OP makes it sound.

There's a line from Russian literary criticism, if I remember it right: "Those who glorify the soil are usually the ones who never had to till it."

Reading the OP lamenting that AI steals the struggle away, going on about how the struggle of climbing the mountain is what gives it meaning, it reminds me of a wealthy person dressing up in peasant clothes to till the field. They don't understand the heart of someone whose survival is on the line.

I see few people actively engaging with the thesis of the article so lemme restate it in another way:

We can agree that the invention of the car revolutionized transit, but when you optimize around cars it creates perverse incentives that warp society. American society for example is rife with these issues: Cities and towns that are fundamentally unwalkable, cars that are increasingly large and hazards to public safety and lower and lower expectations for drivers.

In that sense the AI craze is exactly the same. Even if you believe that AI will or has revolutionized coding (a take I firmly disagree with), the resulting craze is creating perverse incentives that are warping tech. Access to computing is becoming narrower and narrower as prices sky rocket, applications are becoming more unstable and unsecure by the day and more and more of our economy is reliant on AI gains that will likely not be realized. Not all tools reshape society for the better, much like how advertising was a tool for attempting to gain eyes on your product now it has become a dystopian weapon to sell your users as the product.

This is without getting into the actual issues AI has directly, just the way it's warping things around it.

>It doesn’t work well for most things: “A car is just a tool, it matters how you drive it.

It does work. Cars still exist today. Society didn't decide to go back to horses.

>The entirety of all ethics involved in modern technological ecosystems and infrastructures rests solely on how a singular person chooses to use something?

No one claimed anything close to this statement.

>Tools, then, aren’t “neutral” in any way.

Tools may not be neutral. But tools are inevitable. They are a solver to people's problems.

> we can simply ask for art and it materializes before us. There is no struggle at all involved, thus the terrible labor of being an artist is removed!

Do not confuse the simplicity of early tools with there being no struggle to use something. The most efficient way to convey the exact vision of an artist is not purely a prompt.

Desperate attempt from the author to make a contrived point. Invokes postmodernist arguments like power and Heidegger.

Barrage of uncorrelated arguments ranging from economics, power, climate.

When the argument is multi dimensional like this, it usually means the author is struggling and desperate to make a point.

I’m not sure what kind of person finds these interesting and invoking curiosity.

The title doesn’t make me want to read it. It just sounds like anti ai rhetoric.