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There's no such thing as Just a Tool | deadSimpleTech
deadsimpletech.comHeidegger thinks about tools like so: a tool is something (a thing that has being in the Heideggerian sense, not necessarily an object) that represents an extension of human capabilities in some way. A tool is thus any kind of thing that *lets you do something you wouldn't otherwise have been able to*. The important (for us) conceptual leap here is that when a tool works well, or isn't broken, it develops what Heidegger describes as a "ready-to-hand" quality: the tool fades into the background as a kind of human-tool gestalt of a human with the additional capability afforded by a tool forms. As a simple example of this, consider eating with a fork. When the fork is well-designed and not broken, *you don't explicitly have "I am using a fork" in your conscious mind while eating dinner*.
I do not think their assumptions for the baseline of the article are accurate:
Why does use of a tool need to be ideologically neutral? Why draw this conclusion? Someone refusing to use a hammer would very clearly suggest some sort of ideology for why. In fact, entire religions refuse to use power tools for ideological reasons.
You can infer a lot about the tools someone chooses to use.
I think this was more true prior to computers and the internet, but there are plenty of tools we use unwittingly. The freedom to use a different technology is always a physical possibility, but not always a practical one. If you had to drive a nail, and you had with you a hammer and a rock, you could choose to use the rock if you wanted.
Tools have an intended use. They 100% influence the kinds of things likely to be done with it. A hammer is likely to be use to drive nails. A gun is designed to kill. While the gun doesn’t “kill people”, it sure makes it a hell of a lot easier… because that’s what it was designed to do. Just like a hammer makes it a lot easier to drive a nail.
The problem is they were never thought to be true. This is based on a false premise.
Tools absolutely do teach bad habits. Especially when you consider a cell phone a tool, or a computer a tool. We often are making a trade off using tools, but many times we consider those trade offs worth it.
If you have a power drill that dies, most people aren’t grabbing a screwdriver and manually screwing in every screw for a wood working project. The pros of the power drill are the massive difference in speed, and removing the physical strain on your muscles and joints that can do serious damage over time. The major con is now you are beholden to a company to purchase a power tool from. If it’s battery powered, you have to make sure you have their battery and their charger, and also have to purchase replacements if those ever die. Obviously the tradeoff is worth it to most with a power drill vs screwdriver (and nobody is considering using your bare hands), but there absolutely is a tradeoff and we can discuss that when discussing tools.
That is only if the critique about the technologies is about its morality.
When someone says “AI is just a tool” they are actually saying it can enable people to do very good or very bad things. People might respond with “AI is just a tool” if someone says AI is evil, because machine learning is not evil, it is a technology.
It’s also worth noting, that just because it’s a tool does not mean everyone should have access to it. There are plenty of tools that are restricted to specialists by law, or controlled more heavily. They are still tools, but they are tools that can cause a lot of harm if used incorrectly.
I did not read the entire article because it started off with these false premises. I also recognize that most people will not read everything I have written, and that’s fine as well.
I can tell that you didn’t read the article aside from the bullet points, because the point of the article is to refute these ideas presented at the beginning. It is about how tools are often culturally enshrined, how they directly affect people while also being designed by us. I encourage you to read it in full.
Of course he refutes them. He establishes the points to argue against them. The problem is he is setting up a straw man to argue against. I know the whole arguement is about how AI isn’t “just a tool”, except that it is. The difference is how you define a “tool” and he establishef an odd definition of tool to argue against
Saying you can do both good and bad with any tool is misleading if the tool makes it easier to do the bad thing (and I think that is one of the points of the article). Also, it is common, and in my opinion valid, to use metonymy and refer to the practice of how LLMs are made and used rather than just the LLM itself when saying “LLMs are evil”.
This arguement simply does not hold up. Tools can, and often are, used for things they were not intended for. An effective hammer is going to be made of metal and have a decent heft to it. Having a hammer would also make it much easier to bash in someone’s head, (making it easier to do a bad thing).
A gun is designed to kill people, making people more likely to murder. The only people that have a realistic argent for needing guns are going to be police and military, and of course hunters with rifles.
The biggest problem with AI is how wide of a scope the tool applies to. Most tools have a much more narrow use case. AI is designed to be extremely versatile. You could use it to get customized lesson plans yo help structure your learning. Or you could skip the learning and have it give you the answer. It is a tool either way
I meant easier to do the bad thing than to do the good thing. A hammer does not specifically make it easier to attack someone than to use it for carpentry. And hammers are rarely used to attack other people in practice.
I don’t understand why you bring guns into this argument. Like LLMs, they should indeed be banned, except for some very narrow use cases. Most developed countries do ban guns in that way.
For most people, LLMs do make it specifically easier to skip learning than to enhance learning. We can see this in practice where teachers are noticing higher grades for homework but lower grades for the final exams.
To take it to the extreme: you could say buying a lottery ticket can be both a bad and a good financial decision because it costs money, but it can also earn you a lot of money. That statement is technically true, but I hope you agree it is misleading.
Because it is a tool with a use that is used for bad things, like people are arguing with AI
This is going to be especially true for children. Virtually unrestricted AI should not be accessible to kids. If they have access to AI, it should be one that acts as a teacher or private tutor that will help them learn but not give them the answer. Until we can control AI like that, they shouldn’t have access to it.
But we do not have an easy measurement for adults. We have anecdotal experience and vibes. It’s also entirely up to the person how effective the use of the tool is.
This would only be a good comparison if your actions had any impact on your chances of winning. It isn’t random chance how AI is used.
I think a better comparison would be drug usage. Prescription drug usage used properly can turn someone’s life around, objectively improving their life. Obviously abuse of drugs has ruined many lives, and ended many others. We are not saying we should get rid of drugs though.
Drugs are heavily controlled by professionals because of their ability to be abused. It used to be that coke was in soda’s and you could buy opioids over the counter. We learned about their addictive properties and dangers, and they were regulaged.
Perhaps we will some day have a method to control AIs abuse/addiction. It would no doubt look entirely different from controlled substances. Maybe there is a way to have personal accounts only help people learn, and rather that giving them answers it might guide them to learning for themselves. Who knows what this technology might look like in the future