AI is a Mirror

We’ve architected this intelligence very much in our own image. Its eagerness to please and be useful are strong fingerprints of its maker.

See it not as a tool but as a reflecting pane, and we grapple with ourselves. Do we equate our own identity with work? Do we measure ourselves by others? When do we make intentional choices? How freely do we share information? How do we organize the jumbled thoughts in our head? How do we perceive our own identity?

Ask an LLM to do a task and it hurriedly looks outward. How could I build a simple blog? "Here are the top 3 frameworks!" But couldn't you just make me a simple static site generator? "Sure. ~150 lines total, zero dependencies." The AI underestimates its own capability, offering the standard expected response instead of trusting its native fluency to craft bits on the fly.

Don't we do the same? Spending too many cycles on looking to what is out in the world, instead of trusting our own innate abilities to make for ourselves. We've now built this ultimate tool of tools. Now what will we do with it?