Except McLuhan himself was quoted as saying "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us". I think what the blog post was trying to get is the dangerous framing of calling it a tool given...
Except McLuhan himself was quoted as saying "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us". I think what the blog post was trying to get is the dangerous framing of calling it a tool given how we've previously thought about tools, but McLuhan would likely argue that all tools have this property and its not safe to ever think of tools as some self-containing thing apart from us.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting LLMs are "merely a tool", but rather we should approach all tools with a great deal of caution. Anytime we use a tool to accomplish something we're giving something up. And specifically with LLMs what we're giving up is harder to see than with any other tool we've encountered before. The shape of that "giving up" is still a complete unknown, I'm personally still grappling with it and feeling really ambivalent in the process.
I think that by saying it isn't a tool, the goal is to positioning their article in contradiction to those who say AI is just a tool. The goal isn't really to redefine but to contextualise /...
I think that by saying it isn't a tool, the goal is to positioning their article in contradiction to those who say AI is just a tool. The goal isn't really to redefine but to contextualise / reposition how people view AI in the same way that McLuhan describes a lightbulb.
They were a popular talking head in the 70s. Lots of interviews and books. They were a major influence in media theory. They were called the prophet of the internet because a lot of what they were...
They were a popular talking head in the 70s. Lots of interviews and books. They were a major influence in media theory. They were called the prophet of the internet because a lot of what they were saying proved true.
They also had an unusual way of talking and writing, which probably draws from their teaching style.
They also inspired Videodrome, which is how I got into them.
Nice read. My thoughts on tools is that the learning curve of using any tool is changing the way you perceive the world itself, just like driving a car is an entirely man-made abstraction of...
Nice read. My thoughts on tools is that the learning curve of using any tool is changing the way you perceive the world itself, just like driving a car is an entirely man-made abstraction of multiple perceptions (watch the road) and actions (steer, pedal, break). A big part of design is into designing that abstraction to be total and exhaustive, like the handle on a teapot is basically one. In a way, we trade off an old set of mental models for a new one in order to integrate our tools.
AI (I assume in this case, LLM), subtly shifts our perceptions, because it works in the domain of words, in other words, symbols detached from the symbolized. In writing, one has to choose the words carefully to mean what they mean, no more and no less; this is not the case with LLMs, where the corpus will happily fill in whatever unrelated words you don't specify yourself and hence contaminate your mental context.
Using AI has no deliberately designed mental model, because language is an always-shifting thing, and we cannot freeze the meaning of words to be an exact semantic set at any time. Hence the language of many different contexts (same word can mean different things) are blended together. Words don't mean what they mean anymore, and we grow to lose the plot.
You could say "a computer is just a tool". But then observe the lives of many people waking up to look at a screen, looking at a screen whenever they have a free moment, looking at a screen all...
You could say "a computer is just a tool". But then observe the lives of many people waking up to look at a screen, looking at a screen whenever they have a free moment, looking at a screen all day for their job, looking at a screen after work to relax, looking at a screen in the moments before they go to sleep.
I agree with this. "The ______ is a tool," okay, the Internet is also a tool, and we immersed ourselves in it without regulation and without safety rails and true understanding, and it largely...
I agree with this. "The ______ is a tool," okay, the Internet is also a tool, and we immersed ourselves in it without regulation and without safety rails and true understanding, and it largely feels like it's been a change to society like the way I get on a bucking bull and feel a change in my body's tension and release.
AI is a tool and it can be spun to be good or bad varying its use - but at the end of the day consent was manufactured and we all were busy raising our families and working to question the domino. But I think writing and discussion like this proves some of us want to stop more dominos from falling.
Some people seem to develop an unhealthy relationship with LLMs. But I don't think addiction is the right word. More like a warning that you might be consumed by a "tool" and changed by it far...
Some people seem to develop an unhealthy relationship with LLMs. But I don't think addiction is the right word. More like a warning that you might be consumed by a "tool" and changed by it far more than you could have anticipated.
To some people it absolutely is. That's where we start to see the psychosis that some people seem prone to, or on the less extreme scale, where we see people entering into committed relationships...
To some people it absolutely is. That's where we start to see the psychosis that some people seem prone to, or on the less extreme scale, where we see people entering into committed relationships with their AI (except that it's more akin to falling in love with a character from a book or movie than it is to Her (2013)) or the most mild end of the scale where people are replacing all of their everyday search engine queries with prompts.
Except McLuhan himself was quoted as saying "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us". I think what the blog post was trying to get is the dangerous framing of calling it a tool given how we've previously thought about tools, but McLuhan would likely argue that all tools have this property and its not safe to ever think of tools as some self-containing thing apart from us.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting LLMs are "merely a tool", but rather we should approach all tools with a great deal of caution. Anytime we use a tool to accomplish something we're giving something up. And specifically with LLMs what we're giving up is harder to see than with any other tool we've encountered before. The shape of that "giving up" is still a complete unknown, I'm personally still grappling with it and feeling really ambivalent in the process.
I think that by saying it isn't a tool, the goal is to positioning their article in contradiction to those who say AI is just a tool. The goal isn't really to redefine but to contextualise / reposition how people view AI in the same way that McLuhan describes a lightbulb.
Is McLuhan a household name in education or computer Science?
They were a popular talking head in the 70s. Lots of interviews and books. They were a major influence in media theory. They were called the prophet of the internet because a lot of what they were saying proved true.
They also had an unusual way of talking and writing, which probably draws from their teaching style.
They also inspired Videodrome, which is how I got into them.
Media theory, apparently?
Any Canadians who were kids in the 90s will know him as the "media is the message" guy from the heritage minutes.
That explains it, I didn't speak much English at the time. Thanks
100% this
Nice read. My thoughts on tools is that the learning curve of using any tool is changing the way you perceive the world itself, just like driving a car is an entirely man-made abstraction of multiple perceptions (watch the road) and actions (steer, pedal, break). A big part of design is into designing that abstraction to be total and exhaustive, like the handle on a teapot is basically one. In a way, we trade off an old set of mental models for a new one in order to integrate our tools.
AI (I assume in this case, LLM), subtly shifts our perceptions, because it works in the domain of words, in other words, symbols detached from the symbolized. In writing, one has to choose the words carefully to mean what they mean, no more and no less; this is not the case with LLMs, where the corpus will happily fill in whatever unrelated words you don't specify yourself and hence contaminate your mental context.
Using AI has no deliberately designed mental model, because language is an always-shifting thing, and we cannot freeze the meaning of words to be an exact semantic set at any time. Hence the language of many different contexts (same word can mean different things) are blended together. Words don't mean what they mean anymore, and we grow to lose the plot.
That’s rather ominous, but vague. What would be an example of the sort of thing they’re warning about?
You could say "a computer is just a tool". But then observe the lives of many people waking up to look at a screen, looking at a screen whenever they have a free moment, looking at a screen all day for their job, looking at a screen after work to relax, looking at a screen in the moments before they go to sleep.
I agree with this. "The ______ is a tool," okay, the Internet is also a tool, and we immersed ourselves in it without regulation and without safety rails and true understanding, and it largely feels like it's been a change to society like the way I get on a bucking bull and feel a change in my body's tension and release.
AI is a tool and it can be spun to be good or bad varying its use - but at the end of the day consent was manufactured and we all were busy raising our families and working to question the domino. But I think writing and discussion like this proves some of us want to stop more dominos from falling.
Yes, guilty. So it’s about addiction? Is AI use addictive like social media or games?
Some people seem to develop an unhealthy relationship with LLMs. But I don't think addiction is the right word. More like a warning that you might be consumed by a "tool" and changed by it far more than you could have anticipated.
To some people it absolutely is. That's where we start to see the psychosis that some people seem prone to, or on the less extreme scale, where we see people entering into committed relationships with their AI (except that it's more akin to falling in love with a character from a book or movie than it is to Her (2013)) or the most mild end of the scale where people are replacing all of their everyday search engine queries with prompts.