Reading: ‘When Tools Become Creatures’

When Tools Become Creatures, by Dim Sum Thinking

Full arti­cle here: https://​mailchi​.mp/​9​2​5​6​9​d​b​d​a​0​8​f​/​2​0​5​-​c​r​e​a​tures

This per­spec­tive really aligns with my instinct on the machine as a helper. In the past, we usu­ally approached our tools with intent. It was actu­ally common to pre­scribe some delib­er­a­tion before one picks up the tool – much design wisdom can be para­phrased as ‘sketch it before you open Illustrator’. But with gen­er­a­tive tools and AI, we almost default to look­ing to the tool for direc­tion – as a jump­ing-off point. Which is actu­ally a big switch.

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Air Canada must honor refund policy invented by airline’s chatbot

Full arti­cle: https://​arstech​nica​.com/​t​e​c​h​-​p​o​l​i​c​y​/​2​0​2​4​/​0​2​/​a​i​r​-​c​a​n​a​d​a​-​m​u​s​t​-​h​o​n​o​r​-​r​e​f​u​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​y​-​i​n​v​e​n​t​e​d​-​b​y​-​a​i​r​l​i​n​e​s​-​c​h​atbot

The crea­ture goofs; that’s not a story any­more, nei­ther can a human hold that against any other entity. But the cor­po­ra­tion (the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the last time we bestowed agency with­out suf­fi­cient fore­thought) actu­ally attempts to dis­avow the actions of the bot. Which just illus­trates the first arti­cle’s point in the sad­dest way.

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Also related (?): the respec­tive cor­puses of Marshall MacLuhan and Neil Postman.