This isn't the first time, nor will it be the last, that Maha Bali puts into words, ideas I've been wrestling with for a long while. In AI is Not a Tool: It's a Medium-Institution, Maha pushes back on a commonly-used metaphor. We're often told that AI is just a tool and Maha reminds us how a hammer, for example, actually works. If we use a hammer to put a nail in the wall, we can always expect that the nail is going to go in the direction that we started hammering. Such is not the case with AI, she asserts.
In AI is Not a Tool, Maha suggests we get started by reading Abi Awomosu's post: They Say AI is the Next Industrial Revolution. Gen Z Already Knows How Those End. They're not booing AI. They're booing the ‘invisible hand' that is holding it. After soaking in Abi's powerful words, Maha decided to extend some previous writing she's done to articulate her position on AI: neither all-in, or all-out. Maha writes:
Somewhere between techno-pessimism and techno-optimism is the position this piece is arguing for. Not refusal. Not uncritical adoption. Literacy. Sovereignty. The capacity to engage deliberately with a medium you are already inside. To understand its grain, its tendencies, what it does to you when you engage without awareness. Rather than being used by it in either direction: enchanted into dependency or shamed into secret use.
Individual abstention inside a society already saturated with AI infrastructure functions more symbolically than structurally. The medium is infrastructural now. People are already inside AI-mediated systems whether they consciously use AI or not. The struggle shifts from avoid all contact to preserve agency under conditions of contact.
That is why literacy is resistance.
Maha also links to Taz Daniels' Faculty Critical Engagement with AI Pyramid. Taz describes the benefit of the framework as: “[recognizing] that meaningful engagement with AI does not look the same for everyone and that both thoughtful use and thoughtful abstention are valid, ethical, and necessary contributions to higher education.”
In addition to Maha's post giving me a lot to think about today, I'm also reminded of a song from my college days: Hammer and a Nail, by the Indigo Girls. The lyrics of the chorus seem so fitting with Maha's musings, in addition to all the discourse around the importance of friction within educational contexts. See the thoughtful debate between Maha Bali, Jon Ippolito, Jeremy Douglass, Annette Vee, Mark C. Marino, and Marc Watkins for much more to consider when discussing the topic of friction. But now, back to the Indigo Girls and hammers. They sing:
I gotta get out of bed
Get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands
Not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand
And a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth
If you want a rose
I had fun revisiting these lyrics via the annotations on Genuis.com and seeing even more connections and opportunities for reflection. That said, Dave and I planted some flowers the other day to keep our rose bushes company in the front yard and I'm feeling like I had better back slowly away from my computer and go see how they're doing.
