There's no such thing as Just a Tool | deadSimpleTech
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Heidegger 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*.
  • calliope@retrolemmy.com
    1·
    2 months ago

    Really good article.

    There’s a term for phrases like “it’s just a tool”: thought-terminating clichés.

    A thought-terminating cliché is a form of loaded language – often passing as folk wisdom – intended to end an argument and bypass cognitive dissonance with a cliché rather than a point.

    I appreciate knowing the names of things because it makes them easier to identify and discuss.

    • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      TL:DR I don’t think it’s a thought-terminating cliche. I know it’s long, I tried to edit it down, but I have a lot of thoughts on the topic.

      I don’t think it’s a thought-terminating cliche at all; more of a framing device. I think there is an important difference between what I’ll collectively call “AI software” (that is, tools) and the people who use them to cause harm, and I further think that conflating the two obscures the path toward correcting the harm.

      I think Heidegger’s human-tool gestalt is a good framing device for explaining how people use tools as an extension of their wills, and capabilities. Some of these capabilities allow people to harm others in ways that were previously impossible or impractical; tools that enable such capabilities are dangerous tools. There are many such tools: guns, nuclear warheads, hammers, cars, corporations, and so forth. I think “AI software”, indeed all software, sits comfortably in the category of dangerous tools.

      Tool availability also affects how we solve problems, as the author points out. That too is a consideration that is often deemed negligible by the “it’s just a tool” crowd, I think to their detriment. How our tools affect us is a huge component of figuring out how tools fit into society.

      However, just because humans are influenced by the tools at their disposal does not mean the human-tool gestalt is atomic. I think that treating it so obscures one of the means by which we can prevent harm, namely: to separate the person doing the harm from the tools they use to do it.

      I think it’s important to distinguish between different kinds of tools. There are LLMs and diffusion models, and then there are corporations that offer services based on these tools. The corporations are themselves tools, much the same way that multi-tool pocketknives are tools composed of many smaller tools. The people who operate the corporations are using these dangerous tools to hurt other people.

      What, then, do we do with all these new human-dangerous-tool gestalts running around wreaking havoc? I think when a person is causing harm with tools, it’s important to strip the person of their tools. I think this is as true for LLMs as it is for cars, and guns, and corporations. Remove the tool from the person, and their capacity for harm is reduced.

      This can also be done proactively too, which is why we have things like licenses for dangerous tools like forklifts and cars. Whether or not we can do a better job at preventing harm with these proactive measures is a good question, and I think the answer is yes. I think it’s good to keep in mind that the tools we use to restrict dangerous tools are themselves dangerous tools, and they should be used judiciously, but I don’t think that something being a dangerous tool means that a total ban is the best approach, if it’s even a viable approach. c.f. America’s prohibition experiment.

      So I land at “yes, the tools themselves are ‘just’ tools” but I don’t think it qualifies as a thought-terminating cliche. Tools are neither harmless nor beneath our consideration in the conversation about building a better world. The fact that they are “just” tools isn’t a dismissal or any sort of justification, but it is an important difference to distinguish, I think, in figuring out how to solve the problem of malicious tool users.

      • calliope@retrolemmy.com
        1·
        2 months ago

        I’m pretty sure the only requirement of a thought-terminating cliche is that they are

        intended to end an argument and bypass cognitive dissonance with a cliché rather than a point

        It genuinely doesn’t matter what Heidegger’s human-tool gestalt says if people are using “it’s just a tool” as a thought-terminating cliche.

        The reason it sounded like a thought-terminating cliche to me was this part of the article itself:

        What this response seems to mean is the following:

        • The technology being discussed has no bearing on the attitudes or ideologies of the person holding it: use or non-use is ideologically neutral.
        • The technology being discussed can be effectively separated from the people using it: nothing can be inferred about a person from the technologies that they use.
        • The technology is used fully consciously: you are always fully aware that you are using a technology and have complete volitional freedom to use a different technology at any time.
        • The technology does not influence the kinds of things likely to be done with it: use of the technology doesn’t tend to encourage one course of action over another (“guns don’t kill people, people do”).

        They’re describing aspects that are cliche and constructed to not have a point.

  • darklamer@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    (Tailwind CSS is quite directly an attempt to resolve issues that primarily stemmed from React and JSX not playing nicely with standard CSS)

    Fascinating, I have long wondered about the point of Tailwind, why anyone would ever need something like that, but never before seen it explained so succinctly.

  • Bazoogle@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    I do not think their assumptions for the baseline of the article are accurate:

    The technology being discussed has no bearing on the attitudes or ideologies of the person holding it: use or non-use is ideologically neutral.

    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.

    The technology being discussed can be effectively separated from the people using it: nothing can be inferred about a person from the technologies that they use.

    You can infer a lot about the tools someone chooses to use.

    The technology is used fully consciously: you are always fully aware that you are using a technology and have complete volitional freedom to use a different technology at any time.

    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.

    The technology does not influence the kinds of things likely to be done with it: use of the technology doesn’t tend to encourage one course of action over another (“guns don’t kill people, people do”).

    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 consequence of these statements being true is that the only valid criticism of a tool or technology becomes how well it performs the task that it’s designed to perform. You cannot, for example, say that a tool teaches bad habits, because if it isn’t explicitly a teaching tool what it teaches people becomes out-of-bounds for discussion.

    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.

    A common refrain when critiquing specific technologies in this way is that engineers will say that a given technology is “just a tool”

    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.

    • Gobbel2000@programming.dev
      1·
      2 months ago

      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.