We should think of AI not as a tool, but something more akin to a medium, in the same way that say speaking or writing is a medium—a foundational conduit for thinking, for communicating our thinking, and for engaging with the thinking of others.

The range of imaginative possibilities of what we can do with this technology then expands dramatically. 

One example is offered in this Big Think essay by the science fiction author Ken Liu. With AI, we can "play with captured subjectivities" like no other medium before, as Ken demonstrates through using AI to translate a classical Chinese poem in a multitude of ways.

We should think of AI not as a tool, but something more akin to a medium, in the same way that say speaking or writing is a medium—a foundational conduit for thinking, for communicating our thinking, and for engaging with the thinking of others.

The range of imaginative possibilities of what we can do with this technology then expands dramatically. 

One example is offered in this Big Think essay by the science fiction author Ken Liu. With AI, we can "play with captured subjectivities" like no other medium before, as Ken demonstrates through using AI to translate a classical Chinese poem in a multitude of ways. 

https://bigthink.com/high-culture/ken-liu-ai-art/

illiterate enjoyer of crypto and AI art | buffets.eth.limo

I think the implications of this will be profound: AI will open up wide, new vistas to see and react to the world. The more pressing question about AI is thus not about productivity, but literacy. 

We can all very well use AI to run up and down existing valleys quicker, but we will still only be circling around local maxima. It'll be far more meaningful to learn how to wrestle with AI deeply, critically, flexibly, so that we can navigate with it through foreign terrain and savour previously unseen vantage points. 

This is the opportunity of AI: to develop new ways of seeing in a new medium, to think thoughts that cannot be conceived via another.