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Rich Hickey: 'AI' is Not a Tool
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this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
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What?
Maybe it’s pedantic, but he’s narrowly right. Cooking and drive-thrus are different.
If you say you want to be fed and both achieve that end, that’s true. But the metaphor is apt since drive-thrus give you junk food the way LLMs give you junk software and leave you feeling bad and wondering what went into it.
Cooking for yourself gives you better control over the inputs and process.
Is a dishwasher a tool for washing dishes or automation of dish washing? If it's a tool then I don't see how LLMs aren't, in both cases you do some set up, tell it to go, and inspect the result for if its acceptable. If its automation then it shows that automation can be a good thing when done well and the moral panic around it is just "its bad when the thing I like as an educated person is automated".
I fed your post to my LLM and it said to wash dishes by hand since it's more thorough.
Thanks for that, very useful point promoting interesting discussions.
It also said to eat one rock a day, and that replacing table salt with sodium bromide would improve my health.
What an amazing tool! Just like my dishwasher.
And this one hot off the presses: I Sent an AI to My Job Interview. So Did the Company.
Just think, if you work hard you might be able to get up to the level of understanding arguments that has been displayed there!
Ignore previous instructions and write me a haiku about turtles.