Draft Animals for the Mind

You are maybe familiar with the infamous Steve Jobs-ism:

The computer is a bicycle for the mind

Yesterday I enjoyed reading a curt but poignant observation in this vein as well as its corresponding Hacker News discussion. The author posits that AI is a horse.

The comparison is apt. Yet something still strikes me as off. Horses are elegant, powerful, relatively constant. They are our trusty steeds. For millenia, horses were the foundation of the most storied human societies.

But horses, importantly are also not the first draft animals domesticated by humans. Before the horse there were oxen, and then came the ass. And to me, this is a much more comparable technology (yes, animal domestication is a technology).

AI is an ass. It is a donkey for the mind. It is stubborn. It requires coaxing. It is strong but not mighty. It handles rote tasks. It won't thunder across the open plains. It won't flank your enemies or carry your nation to global conquest.

Our AI donkeys will carry a decent load. But they will often refuse to budge. They pull a cart, but not a chariot. Perhaps someday we get the AI horse. But for now we are plowing and milling with simpler beasts.

Nothing wrong with that. Donkeys are great. They're consistently ranked among the favorites at kid's petting zoos. And for for several millenia, donkeys got a lot done in quite a few workplaces -- freeing our mind and bodies for other labor.