3:20
Charlotte Kemp recounts her mother's wood carving to argue that tools are neutral. What matters is how people use them. She draws the parallel to AI, where human choices determine whether the technology creates harm or value.
Charlotte Kemp recounts her mother's wood carving to argue that tools are neutral. What matters is how people use them. She draws the parallel to AI, where human choices determine whether the technology creates harm or value.
This is a story about how we use our tools. Many years ago, my mom, who is a very creative person, experimented with the hobby of wood carving. She did some absolutely amazing work, some of which hangs in my house today. But I remember as a young child watching my mom learn this new craft of hers. This was the days before we had YouTube and the internet, so she actually had to find some books and read about wood carving, and then she had to find a teacher who taught her the different techniques, explained the different tools to her, and showed her how to use them. And then I watched her every night with her sets of tools, a huge piece of, of blank wood, putting a beautiful pattern onto it, and then carefully, painstakingly removing all pieces of wood that didn't belong there. And then a whole range of different sandpapers and sanding them down to the perfect finish, and then a whole range of different kinds of wood dyes and stains and finishing it off and then buffing it off. And she gave these away as gifts to family members and to friends, and she got commissions for them as well. Various people asked her to make something of their logo so that they could give it as a corporate gift at a function, and it really was beautiful work. So I'm 12 years old, and I'm sitting watching my mom do this, and she leaves the room at some point, and I figure, oh, how hard can this be? Mom's just gouging the wood out. So I try and help mom, help her and gouge that wood out, because there was— I could see there was a big section that needed to be done. And luckily she returned to the room in soon enough time to rescue her project from my attempts. I had, with no technique, just removed wood without really understanding what she was trying to create. with the kind of the flow of that pattern. But she fixed it up, she sanded it, she stained it, and no one but my mom or I could ever look at that and actually see the mistake that had been made there, the damage that had been done. And it's kind of played in my mind for so many years. How come mom could do this so well? And when I tried to do it, I made a mess. And then it crossed my mind one day, those wood carving tools lying there in the lounge. If someone had broken into our house and picked up one of those tools, and held it at our throat. They could have threatened us with it. The tool itself is completely neutral. In my mom's hands, it made a masterpiece. In my hands, it made a mess. In someone else's hands, it would have maimed. But it wasn't the tool's fault. The tool didn't create these things. It was how the humans used it that mattered. This is actually a story about artificial intelligence, how we decide to use the artificial intelligence tools that are around us. will determine whether we create a mess, whether we maim and hurt other people with what we're doing, or whether we learn to tap into our creativity, the essential human part of us, and create a masterpiece with our work, with our art, and with our lives.
Unlock the Power of Thresholds_ What Ancient Wisdom Teaches About New Beginnings
