hmmmmmmmmm……

Sounds like a culture machine? The evolved, enshitified version of the culture industry perhaps, but a machine nonetheless. We should look into it.

But I might not be the right person to ask. I’d be likely to say that a hammer is a culture machine because it takes cultural knowledge and materials to fashion a hammer and then when you use the hammer (as it is intended) it should produce “cultural value.” It’s slippery but that’s why we always say YMMV. Fortunately there are a lot of culture machine options out there for you; they aren’t all hammers! You can have any technology/culture machine you want, as long as it’s ______. Go ahead, put a word in there. What’s the thing that technology must be in order for it to be a technology?

[Given my Virillio focus of late, I’d be remiss to not remind about the accident that the hammer invents. Ask your thumb. Heck, you could probably spend the rest of your life watching schadenfreude video of hammer accidents.] And yes, we already have a similar archive of video and narratives of AI accidents as well. It’s good to develop a sense of humor about these things (some might say).

Seriocomically though, is AI a math machine? Is a baseball bat a wood machine? And the answer is yes that apprehension, that perspective, of the machine generates certain capacities in relationship to it.

That’s nice… and? And, maybe we have this apprehension because to a hammer everything looks like a nail? Or because the perspective is giving us what we (think we/feel we) want? Or because we’re secretly terrified and this fantasy of AI as math is helping us sleep at night?

IDK. I’m neither your therapist nor your confessor. Maybe try talking it out with Eliza’s second cousin twice removed. Good luck with that though.