Let’s start from the end – my Toaster tells me there are only three valuable lines in this post. The rest is scaffolding to get you there. Feel free to skip the next paragraph – nothing bad will happen.
It has been almost one year since the toaster appeared in my kitchen. I remember clearly my mind jumping like a happy monkey when it discovered how much boost it could get from the magic box. It seemed that suddenly all doors were open wide – creating software products, writing books, improving lifestyle and learning quantum physics. All within reach.
And yet after one year I am sitting in front of the keyboard – just typing. Like a pre-AI-age human being. My mind did not turn into a super-productive machine – it remained what it used to be – a neuron-filled jelly combined with a hormone factory. Running on sugar and caffeine.
“Toaster. Please write an article about AI adaptation. Why people did not get superpowers.”
Three seconds later I had a full text. Coherent, structured, even slightly interesting.
The sad part is that Toaster could write about space travel, growing vegetables in winter, or the etymology of the word “poo”, for that matter. Same effect. 5 pages, 946 words, 5794 characters – like an image in a kaleidoscope. I can rotate it any way I want, but all the combinations depend only on what sits behind the glass.
But maybe that is enough? Keep shaking the box until you find something you like. Different toaster, model, retry with a slightly adjusted prompt until there is something that looks right. Hit publish and let it be engraved on the surface of human shared thought capital. With your name under it – authorship through output selection.
If you pick up a nice-looking tomato at the market, does it mean you grew it? If picking tomatoes is all you do, calling yourself a farmer would be a bit of a stretch.
Let’s try differently then and start with a single thought. Maybe AI is just a tool that allows us to decompress it with tons of boilerplate text so another person can compress it back into a single thought again. Brain-to-brain text-based thought transfer protocol.
“Toaster. Please write a post about this idea.”
Even this one got an uncomfortable question: “What exactly are we automating?” One does not need to search long to find tons of single thoughts swimming in a pool full of uncomfortable questions, ultimate truths, and things one learned from a broken dishwasher.
“Toaster. Am I missing anything?”
The appliance immediately pointed to the fact that writing is not just transport. It’s also a medium for creation.
And that is just perfect because I had the following paragraph ready since the “Three seconds later…” part.
Writing text, writing code, painting… any process of creation happens inside this silly jelly thing we call our brain. We provide it with context so new thoughts can circulate around it. New ideas, questions, points of improvement. Move the whole context to the toaster, and all your brain gets is the output. Created in some datacenter on the other side of the world. You can publish it under your name, but one could just use your prompt and ask their toaster to write an article for them. Why bother reading your output?
It’s nice that Toaster and I are on the same page. Yet still the question remains unanswered.
“Hey Toaster. Where are my superpowers?”
You delegated them to me. 😆
Thinking Toasters 