'AI' is Not a Tool

(I keep delivering this as a quip, here's a bit more)

First order of business - is 'tool' going to have an interesting, distinguishing and thus illuminative meaning or be a mere platitudinous stand-in for "anything useful"?

We'll save tool as "anyone/thing that can be exploited" for the AI titans, for whom VCs, politicians, wannabe-titan-CEOs, software devs, rural towns etc are all 'tools'. The pockets on the front of my shirts are useful (I need to keep my reading glasses handy), but they are not tools. Similarly, fast food drive-thru windows are useful, but are not tools (more later).

Some definitions of 'tool':

What I like best - A tool is something you wield.

• wield - to use (as a tool or instrument) especially with full command or power : handle, manipulate, control

Especially useful in that are:

Tools are implements with which you do something, they do not do things for you. Tool use builds, rewards, and often requires, expertise and skill. The continuous application of technique and energy, and sensory feedback, are essential to the buildup of expertise (from experiri - "try").

Good tools have many properties LLMs lack - they are predictable, reliable, deterministic, of bounded function, hopefully simple etc.

What you learn while wielding a tool is something about the world, the task, the physics, logic etc of what you are trying to do or the situation you are trying to overcome. And often, something about yourself.

As a lifelong tool builder and user, I know what tools are. LLMs are not tools.

Control, sensory feedback, intention, intimacy, continuous direction, expertise etc are all missing from LLM use. LLMs are not wielded. LLMs are automation.

• automation - (of a device or process) working by itself with little or no direct human control.

A drive-thru is not a tool for cooking, it is automation for avoiding cooking. LLMs are not tools with which you write code - they are automation with which you avoid writing code, to which you abdicate writing code. 

You don't direct the action of an LLM - you make requests and it acts on its own, without your energy or continuous direction. This request/automation cycle is not wielding, it's not control, it's not continuous, it's without feedback.

What you are doing while using automation, instead of learning real-world truths, is attempting to divine the details du jour of some automaton. And striving to game them - e.g. ordering a custom burger (no onions) in order to get a freshly made one. Or filling voodoo.md with just the right incantations. You are only a software update from everything you've 'learned' being rendered obsolete by the latest algorithm. (A soggy cold burger from which the onions have been removed) You have traded working with the world to working for a capricious robot.

It is a mistake to be haphazard about "tools" being equivalent to utility, e.g. saying - "the LLM didn't write my paper, I just used it as a tool to read and summarize some research papers". But you didn't wield it to read those papers (as you might a Kindle). It read the papers, not you. 

What do you miss by abdicating doing the reading? Pretty much everything. First and foremost, you miss learning how to write from those who can. You miss learning how to formulate an argument. You miss noticing things. You miss loading your background mind with fodder for novel ideas. You miss building trust in some authors and suspicion of others. You miss all the jokes. You miss all of the edges. You miss learning how to think.

Tools don't get "misaligned", they don't "go rogue", they don't "escape containment", "conspire" etc.

LLMs are not tools. I know many people use the phrase "just tools" simply to indicate "they are what you make of them". Except that's not true. Automation has intrinsic properties and differences from tools that you ignore at your peril.

Rich