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(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).
a device or implement, especially one held in the hand, used to carry out a particular function an instrument (such as a hammer or saw) used or worked by hand : an instrument used by a handicraftsperson or laborer in their work
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
Held in your hand - a source of both control and feedback, and an indication of the intimacy of the act of use Power - force, energy transmission and direction, leverage etc Control - intention and continuous directing of the course of events
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.
As always, timely and profound. Thank you for putting it into words; I've had similar notions but have failed to find the right words. Very well done!
Whether or not Large Language Models are machines rather than tools (under Lewis Mumford's framework for categorizing technology by level of autonomy granted to the wielder, I think LLMs fall squarely as machines), the underlying subtext in this statement is that because LLMs can have positive uses, they cannot be blamed for any of the negative outcomes that arise from the use of the technology; "It's human beings that infuse technology with politics, not the other way around". This view misunderstands the true nature of technology, which is, by adopting its use, a society becomes warped to fit the needs of the technology; technology is just politics by other means. What kind of world do we submit ourselves to by accepting a machine premised on human manipulation and desocialization?
I don't care for the framing as automation. Automation should be like a tool, you hand off work to the automation, you get it back. If something goes wrong, you can fix it. Automation should be human intelligence encoded into a machine. LLMs are human mediocrity. What framing would I prefer? Categories are hard, this could be a new type of thing. Or perhaps the human managers are right: this is delegation. Giving a direct report a task is delegation, not tool use, and certainly not automation. In the case of a manager giving a direct report something, the delegatee gets a chance to improve and grow. In the case of an LLM, the delegatee continues to exist after the task as the same thing that existed before the task, and the manager gets no human connection. When you delegate a task you waive responsibility for the result, but are still responsible for the result being what you need. Sounds like handing work to an LLM to me!
Article is not ontologically clarifying anything. Argument could be used for any disruptive technology or tool like fire, money, steam engine, computer & ...
For clarity: I, the human, do something when I instruct AI, typically Claude, to do something. It's a tool. I asked Vibe: "Is it reasonable to describe AI as a tool?". https://chat.mistral.ai/work/eb5cc87d-8b94-43ec-9bcb-daef25ade478 tl;dr it's a reasonable and common description, but it's worth being precise about what it implies.
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