Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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AI is like a hammer (self.showerthoughts)

submitted 5 months ago by ironhydroxide to c/[email protected]

52 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Any tool can be a hammer if you use it wrong enough.

A good hammer is designed to be a hammer and only used like a hammer.

If you have a fancy new hammer, everything looks like a nail.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

It's more like Jefferson's dumbwaiter, in that it was created by someone who verbally supported an egalitarian utopian vision of society, but the device itself is a scale model of an exploitative social system. At one station of the device, unpaid/low-paid labor operates out of view of the user, and then at the other station, the user enjoys an almost-magical appearance of an answer to their request.

No tool is "just a tool", after all. In that way, AI is like a hammer.

(That section of the video leans heavily on Do Artifacts Have Politics?, which is a pretty short and accessible essay. If you're not convinced that artifacts do have politics, and you don't want to watch the video, just read a few paragraphs of the essay.)