Tom Winans
1 min readSep 17, 2024

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Interesting narrative.

I agree in part with your statement: "Specifically, technology is an example of something which is neither human nor thing nor God." I disagree with "nor thing". I think "thing" causes cognitive friction because we see AI output rendered conversationally (LLMs are front and center, but the shoulders on which they stand are not to be ignored). But, for me at least, it is a different kind of thing... still a thing... but what you can do with it is beyond what could be done with other technology things that we've seen in the past. Mobile phones, as just one in recent history, have been so transformative as to cause us to replace many tools with one physical device and the software apps on it sufficient in capability to replace many other tools. Mobile communication has unlocked incredible potential... AI goes beyond this and unlocks potential to create, and even invites us to create, in ways that novel innovations like mobile phones do not.

If we look at AI as a special tool that unlocks potential, then we could view it as something that extends us in exoskeletal ways, perhaps. And, with this, we can create and work in new ways.

This perspective also frames AI not as some existential threat, but as a tool with which existence becomes richer. This only comes from recognition that AI is a tool that can be rightly or wrongly used, and that we, as humans who are made for much more than something in a Darwinian continuum, ultimately use or abuse.

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Tom Winans
Tom Winans

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