It might shock people who've heard otherwise these past few years, but AI is just a tool.
But a tool for what?
Trains expanded our reach across the globe. The telephone kept us close to the people those trains had carried away. The internet let us see each other and trade news and opinion without waiting on space in a newspaper column.
So what does AI let us do? Cut off from our humanity, from the worth of being a person, not much. Aim it at replacing workers, or connection, or human experience, and it fails. People who can't earn can't buy what it makes. And it becomes one more thing fighting for attention we've already spent.
People are looking for something authentic, something that speaks to the human condition, something actually new. A machine that imitates human experience has nothing to offer that search.
So what do you make of a tool that looks superintelligent one minute and needs constant correction the next? Sometimes it knows what you want before you finish typing. Sometimes it's an alien copying your speech while missing the whole point.
I've found it's a tool for going deep, not just fast. Not a paint roller flinging paint across the furniture, but a fine brush for the details. The raw model is only the starting material. The value is in everything you build around it. More secure software. Writing that's clearer to read. Cheaper, lower-power ways to get an answer you can trust.
But none of that comes quickly. Standing in a museum full of great paintings doesn't make you a painter, and AI won't make you a master. What it gives you, if you're patient, is room to build real understanding and a finished work instead of a rough sketch. That means learning the tool, saving your energy for the detail work, and caring about the small strokes.
Even the steadiest hand doesn't choose the subject of the painting. That's the painter's work. It's the same with AI. No model, however capable, and no amount of alignment can decide what we aim it at. We do. And I'd aim it at making life easier, more enjoyable, more meaningful. Buying back time to create and to meditate.
There's no speed run through this. The depth it takes to master, and the friction any new technology runs into, will see to that. But the people pushing it to help rather than replace have at least chosen a subject worth painting.