AI is not “just a tool”
I am sick and tired of people saying that “AI is just a tool” because it is quite simply wrong. Framing the technology of LLMs as “just a tool” is meaningless and justifies nothing. It’s a pithy phrase people use to either trivialize a thing that’s much more complicated or to excuse their use of dangerous products made by irresponsible companies.
Software developers are very fond of saying “well, it’s just a tool, it’s how you use it.” It’s a rote argument used to extricate themselves from the very real complicated aspects surrounding the technology of LLMs. I see it repeated in tech organizing spaces, in the justification of LLM-generated code in the Linux kernel, in articles by journalists, and on and on.
AI is not just a tool. AI is an industry led by psychos. AI is LLMs. AI is agents. AI is the massive expansion of data centers. AI is shitty features crammed into software that doesn’t need it. AI is a product.1
AI, in the current reckless ways those two letters are used, means far more than something that's "just a tool."
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Let’s say you use a coding harness hooked up to a chatbot API to write code. That’s not just a tool. It’s a product you pay for. The model you use today will be retired. The cost of all of this will go up because the token are subsidized and the companies aren't focused on turning a profit yet. The companies that build these products are either themselves or rely upon other companies that are led by irresponsible people saying unhinged things to increase their market valuation, keep their staff from leaving, and to build their own ego. That’s not “just a tool.”
Sure, you could run a local LLM model on your computer and use it to generate some SQL to help you create a report. Or generate awful art for your D&D campaign with your friends. But who made that model? Who trained it? Where did the data come from? How much did it cost in compute and environmental resources? What are the motivations behind the company making it?
Let me tell you what a tool is, since many seem to have forgotten. A tool is something that people make or fashion or adapt to accomplish specific tasks.
A power drill is a tool, almost even “just a tool.” Yes, engineering and manufacturing and resource extraction went into making it. And the power drill is more capable than a hand drill. The technology of motors and batteries and plastic molding all come together to make it easier for someone to bore a hole into another material. While the power drill is also a product and there’s an industry that exists to manufacture these tools, the leaders of these companies are NOT talking about how power drills and hammers and levels have a greater than 10% chance of wiping out humanity. Using a power drill does not have the potential to stunt the learning of critical skills by carpenters that use them.
My power drill does not “sometimes make mistakes” and accidentally rotate in the wrong direction. If it did, I’d consider it broken. I would try to fix it and if that wasn’t possible, I would stop using it. It would be considered defective.2
Emacs is a just tool. Vim is a just tool. These are pieces of software made by people to accomplish specific tasks—editing text. They are not industries or even companies. They don’t require massive amounts of resources to use or even create. They are not inherently dangerous. Sure, one could use Vim to write a computer virus. But that's the application of the tool, not a problem with the tool itself. If I launch Vim and type "try to hack into this server" into my buffer, it won't commit a cybercrime. It's absurd to talk about long-time-horizon coding harnesses hooked up probabilistic LLM APIs as "just a tool."
When people trivialize what AI is by saying it's “just a tool” they are abdicating responsibility for the use of a technology that is being handled in a dangerous and irresponsible way. By using the various AI products, it's showing demand for something that we as a society haven't even begun to scratch the surface of its harms and so far see very little of its benefits (making software faster and creating awful presentations are hardly major benefits to society). The leaders of these AI companies continue to say unhinged things causing mass anxiety. We must stop perpetuating this “just a tool” rhetoric that helps enable the continued behavior of these companies and their leaders.
So please stop saying that “AI is just a tool” because that couldn’t be further from the truth and causes far more harm than good. It justifies nothing. It means nothing. It helps no one. When you find yourself about to say it, just don't say it. When you type it out, delete that sentence. You’ll sound a bit less foolish.
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AI is not really most of those these things. AI is a much broader capability and field applied in all sorts of ways. Unfortunately, generative AI with LLMs has co-opted the term in the public consciousness. For most of my life, AI meant the behavior of non-player entities in video games. These two letters mean a lot of things right now and the unspecific use of them is also contributing to the problem.↩
Which is not to say that something being probabilistic invalidates it from being a tool. But I do think the probabilistic nature of LLMs is not intentional and makes it more complicated.↩