AI is Not a Tool

Humans are toolmakers. The dominance we have in this world is because of the tools we created. We started with stones and wood; then fire came in, and weapons evolved from wood to iron and eventually to firepower. Along the way, the invention of the wheel changed everything, followed by the steam engine, electricity, and machines. All these tools helped humanity thrive.

Dominance

Tools empowered humans to succeed and gain dominance over other species. They compensated for all that we lacked in the natural world. We were neither the fastest, strongest, nor most coordinated species, yet we dominated all others with the tools we made.

We reached a point where we built tools called computers, which provided sophisticated capabilities for humans. These tools enabled us to achieve impossible feats and redefined the world. They also inspired us to create machines that look and think like humans, which we named humanoids and artificial intelligence.

Rise of Machines and a Tool that can think and act

As technology matured and infrastructure and resources aligned perfectly, we reached a point where intelligent machines became advanced enough to make a significant impact—arguably on par with, or even better than, humans. We termed this phenomenon Generative AI.

The race to make it smarter is ongoing, but we have overlooked one critical aspect: what we are building is not a tool. As Yuval Noah Harari says, there is a fundamental difference that sets AI apart from other tools: it can make decisions on its own.

A knife can kill a person but cannot decide whether or not to hurt someone—it requires human intervention to act. The same goes for a nuclear bomb; it can destroy a country in seconds but cannot decide to detonate itself.

For the first time in human history, we are facing a "tool" that can think and act independently—something humanity has never encountered in its evolutionary history. What this means for humanity is yet to be revealed.

The impact

Imagine a nuclear bomb which will decide by its own when and where to explode and make its own logic on why it made the choice without having a human in the loop. If we know that world has such a bomb, will we sleep peacefully?

AGI and ASI systems could bring us towards such a future where the worlds systems can think by its own. What if the traffic system is integrated with Generative AI and it reasons and decide who has the priority and will its decisions align with humans.

The Aliens we build

It is equivalent to humans discovering an alien life form that seems aligned with our species and speaks its own language. However, one thing AI shares with such an alien life form is that we do not truly understand how it works or what it is capable of. All we have is probability.

Welcome to the new world, where tools can think.