As I understand it, in America "it's just a tool" is shorthand for "guns should be regulated like hammers, i.e. barely at all, responsibility lies with the user not those who make, market and sell it"

Needless to say a lot of people disagree with that, because of the shootings. And internationally, a lot of societies regulate guns a great deal.

I'm not saying this to steer the conversation towards gun control, or to compare AI use to killing. Rather, I'm saying that the conversation here so far has has been confused because people have different ideas of what "it's just a tool" means, so they're talking at cross purposes.

To some it's an obvious statement of fact; almost everything man-made is a tool, AI is a tool like a pair of shoes or a guitar is a tool.

To others it's a statement that corporations should be held blameless, and access is a moral right that shoudn't be limited on consequentialist grounds.

You’re not doing this but to your example: Guns don’t have numerous other positive use cases, so AI is simply not a fair comparison.

And in the case of AI, given the media environment the fact that it’s being used to save millions of hours doing back office automation is never covered.

So yes this is a prime argument for AI. It’s just a tool with a myriad of uses that no one covers cuz they’re boring.

As to the rest of the authors argument, obviously I’m aware of its myriad negative consequences but just disagree that banning matrix math or NIMBY-ying warehouses where matrix math happens is somehow a solution to those problems.

You want to talk about policy fixes at the level of applications, I’m all ears.

> To others it's a statement that corporations should be held blameless, and access is a moral right that shoudn't be limited on consequentialist grounds.

The old, what is better for the rich VS what is better for society.

I think another important parallel between guns and AI is that the people who say "it's just a tool" are discounting all the cultural context. Additionally and anecdotally, they tend to be the people who are most connected to that cultural element.

A gun is just a tool except it's also a symbol of countless things within American culture: freedom and independence and even masculinity sometimes. It's bound up with various cultural tropes and narratives that mean it's only a tool in the same way that Mjǫllnir is only a hammer.

Similarly, we have literally centuries of cultural context to the idea of thinking machines, and it is a tool, but a lot of the people saying that also think it's their girlfriend or god or just something that will entirely upturn society and remove [entire class of people].

"It's just a tool" is accurate but disingenuous, knowingly or not. There's a lot more bound up in a gun or AI than there is in a can opener.