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Sat 7 Nov, 2026 12:57 pm
Title: AI is not a tool anymore. It is a quasi-subject.
Everyone says: AI is just a tool. Like a hammer. Like a calculator.
I think this is already false.
A tool does not generate you. AI does.
Here is what I mean. In my book I ask one question about any situation: Who generates whom?
With a hammer, you generate the action. With AI, the vector reverses. You ask a question — and the structure of AI’s answers starts to generate your thinking, your tasks, your style, your decisions.
You stop asking: “What do I want to say?”
You start asking: “How do I prompt it to say it better?”
That is not using a tool. That is sliding into a new position: service personnel for algorithms.
I am not against AI. I am against agitation — competing with the machine in speed of generation. That race we will lose, and we will lose ourselves in it.
The right act with AI, in my system, is different: refuse the race, and use AI to clear space for genuinely human choice and living contact.
Do you feel this reversal in your own life? When did you last notice that AI was not helping you think — but thinking instead of you?
Full manuscript is being prepared for publication. Working version — on PhilPapers / Zenodo.
The central flaw in this argument is that the author confuses influence with agency.
AI can influence your thinking, but so can books, teachers, conversations, and virtually every other source of information. That doesn't make those things quasi-subjects or mean they have taken control of your thinking.
The argument rests on several unjustified leaps:
(1) Influence becomes generation. The fact that AI influences your thinking doesn't mean it generates you.
(2) Assistance becomes subordination. Asking AI to improve your writing doesn't mean you've surrendered your intentions or judgment.
(3) Generating answers becomes exercising authority. AI can suggest a decision. It cannot make that decision yours.
(4) A change in workflow becomes a philosophical revolution. The fact that a new technology changes how people work doesn't establish that the relationship between human and machine has been reversed.
In short: a technology influencing its user is not the same thing as a technology assuming agency over its user. The author never establishes that crucial distinction.
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