Post by @HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org

2026-10-14 05:07 UTC

I do not want to cite Hickeys text because it is brilliantly written and grabbing some phrases would diminuish it. Go and read it. The tl;dr of his argument is this: “Tools” are something that we fully and directly control and that enhances our abilities. Large Language Models are neither.

Replies (3)

@digdilem@lemmy.ml 2026-10-14 05:57

Thanks for the tldr; As a semantic argument I agree with the first commenter in the article, it goes too far. Managers sometimes refer to their employees as tools, and they don’t fully control them either. Plenty of more cleanly defined tools (explosives, guns, chemicals) can have unintended consequences if used without proper controls, training or care. I used the term “AI is a tool” at a meeting yesterday, and I will again. (Minor grumble: Eww, Linkedin. Having visited the site again I know I’ll get a bunch more spam and targetted adverts for a few weeks)

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@saimen@feddit.org 2026-10-14 06:11

What are they then? A medium?

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@dieTasse@feddit.org 2026-10-14 06:48

I think that is the whole issue. AI should be used as a tool to enhance our skill, instead people are using it as self sufficient entities, the result of which are burnt tokens and unmaintainable and buggy code. Same is valid for other areas. Instead of letting it generate an email - a wall of text that has to be interpreted by another llm - maybe use it to check on your grammar or suggest changes in the text you write.

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