Stop saying that AI is just a tool and it only matters how it is used
[2026 Update] This post has garnered significant traffic to my blog as well as discussion on and offline over the last 10 months. For some google search queries (such as “ai just a tool”), this ranks in the top-2 search results consistently. So for folks finding this post, and my thoughts on the matter, I want to note that I’ve given a keynote on “tool-making” (which is the subject of my PhD) and I encourage you to read this blog and then consider watching the first 10 minutes (or so) of my talk.
- ▪[2026 Update] This post has garnered significant traffic to my blog as well as discussion on and offline over the last 10 months.
- ▪For some google search queries (such as “ai just a tool”), this ranks in the top-2 search results consistently.
- ▪So for folks finding this post, and my thoughts on the matter, I want to note that I’ve given a keynote on “tool-making” (which is the subject of my PhD) and I encourage you to read this blog and then consider watching the first 10 minutes
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
[2026 Update] This post has garnered significant traffic to my blog as well as discussion on and offline over the last 10 months. For some google search queries (such as “ai just a tool”), this ranks in the top-2 search results consistently. So for folks finding this post, and my thoughts on the matter, I want to note that I’ve given a keynote on “tool-making” (which is the subject of my PhD) and I encourage you to read this blog and then consider watching the first 10 minutes (or so) of my talk. The introduction is a concrete walk-through of some of the ideas I discuss here in this blog.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Frank Elavsky.
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