Here are the slides from the first of my two keynotes last week, Tool-using tools – Perceptions and misperceptions of generative AI. This one was for the Global AI Summit 2025, hosted at Bennett University in India.
The talk covered ground that I’ve already blogged about. My big point is that it is not just inaccurate but misleading to think of genAIs as tools: it grants us too much agency. If you have to use an existing term then I think “appliance” is a much more accurate label because they are technologies that do thinking for us, much as refrigerators do cooling for us, or dishwashers wash our dishes. Just as some skill is needed to use a dishwasher or fridge, some skill is needed to get a genAI to think: it’s OK to think of prompts as tools for that purpose. However, it is not our thinking, and that matters. GenAIs are unlike any prior technology because they are, like us, tool users and creators. It is possible to ask genAIs to act as (or at least create and host) tools. It’s just not what we usually use them for. I think “metatool” is a better term.
I gave this talk online, at 4am Wednesday morning, finishing less than an hour before I had to leave for the airport for Japan, where I was due to give my second keynote of the week, on generative vs degenerative AI, so I might not have been at the top of my game!
