'AI is not the problem, YOU are', and other false analogies used to hoodwink us

 

 The NRA, the infamous American National Rifle Association that defends the right to bear arms, has long used what is known as a ‘False analogy’ to back up its claims that everyone should have the right to buy, carry and use a weapon, however dangerous. This analogy runs like this: ‘Guns are not the problem: people are. Guns on their own do nothing, it’s how you use them that is the problem’.

It’s a false analogy because by the same reasoning, nothing is a problem on its own, and the ones responsible are the users. So the analogy continues: you don’t blame hammers for being a potential weapon to kill with, why should you blame guns? If no-one uses guns to kill other people, guns are simply…not dangerous.

I keep seeing the same sort of disingenuous, mendacious and illogical reasoning used when it comes to AI, especially GenAI (like Chatgpt): AI is not the problem, you are. AI is a wonderful thing, it’s the users who don’t understand it, misuse it, abuse it, fraud with it. Reform the people and hey presto! Everything will be fine.

This logical fallacy is quickly followed by another: AI is here to stay, so adapt! Because there’s nothing you can do since, well, it’s here. And because it’s here, we have to do something with it…so let’s rush and find uses for it without taking the time to think it through: what are we running the risk of losing? (click on the link!) How will it affect core cognitive skills we’ve had for hundreds of thousands of years? How will it affect learning, deep learning, retention, comprehension, thinking, critical thinking, creation, independence, personality, genius? (Genius in the 18th-century sense of course, that is, personal talent and idiosyncratic characteristics).

Ah, no worries mate, it’s here to stay so 'Use it or be square'. 'Use it or fall behind'. Use it or be an old fart who can’t handle the truth. What’s the truth? It’s HERE TO STAY - YOU HAVE NO CHOICE - STOP WHINGEING.

You see, what’s funny (yet heart-breaking) about this is that, in many ways, this illogical, unreflective thinking, this stringing together of logical fallacies we’ve known about for ever: this is completely in line with what GenAI could ultimately lead us to do – to paraphrase Dante: Ye who start using GenAI all the time, abandon all hope of thinking critically for yourself, and let a non-sentient, replicating, imitative, statistical machine do it for you.

Because of course the False Analogy is just that: a logical fallacy, a ‘denkfout’ as the Dutch would call it: a mistake in thinking. A gun is just not a hammer. Yes both can kill, but it’s mighty difficult to kill people with a hammer in 15 minutes, while guns make that very easy indeed: ‘As of September 10, 2025, there have been 358 mass shootings in America in 2025; of those, 47 were school shootings: twenty-four were on college campuses, and 23 were on K-12 school grounds'. (https://massshootingtracker.site/; https://www.gunviolencearchive.org).

No hammer that I can see. Only guns and high-velocity weapons. Who’s to blame, what’s to blame? Would those 5 school shootings a month happen if guns were not available, and crucially, if guns were not what they are?

Obviously, I am not comparing GenAi and guns – that would be a seriously false analogy: I’m comparing logical fallacies and how they’re used to hoodwink us. And I’m simply saying what you all know already: people may be a problem but they are not the first problem – that’s guns. But it’s a lot easier to blame people, especially when you have a stake in the game: you sale guns, say. When it comes to AI, the most vocal parties who oppose any kind of regulation are of two kinds: those who benefit from it financially, and those who benefit from it personally. By the latter, I mean those users who are happy trading autonomy for convenience and speed, so that instead of asking themselves what they think, what they should do and how, they delegate it all to a mindless statistical programme.

By blaming people and not the tool, we essentially do exactly the same: we confuse the essence of humankind with a punctual moment in our history. We keep being told we must be efficient, that things must happen quickly, that living fast is the way, that immobility is a sin, that it’s better to do 5 things poorly but quickly than one slowly but well. And so we justify using GenAI for everything because it is ‘efficient’, because ‘it saves time’. And we hoodwink ourselves here, we let ourselves be led by the well-known confirmation bias, whereas what we need is to step back and think for a minute.

We cannot allow interested parties to shame us into taking that step back by falsely claiming ‘It’s here to stay, there’s nothing we can do, we must move on with the times’. We cannot allow those parties to make us deceive ourselves by pretending we have no choice. We do have a choice.

Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony that we end up being persuaded by a machine that what is best for us is…to use that machine? Oh wait, that’s exactly what happened with Capitalism, and the trickle-down theory.

Or is the ultimate irony the fact that so many people blithely accept – and re-use – logical fallacies on themselves, thereby proving that one of the things we most stand to lose with GenAI are critical thinking faculties, and the need to develop and internalise their use? 

So before you tell me that ‘I’m falling behind because the world is racing forward on the wings of AI’, please do the basic critical thinking work: define ‘Falling behind’, define ‘Forward’, define 'bright future', and above all show me you’ve thought about it from more than the perspective of your own interests.

Show me you can think without assistance, even if only to start with.

Show me you’re human.

I'm Vincent Hernot - born and bred in St Malo, Brittany, France, educated there and in Rennes, then in Ireland and in Normandy, pushed it up to a PhD in Irish things (Linguistics and Political Science), before moving to the Netherlands at the tail-end of my 20s. Found a job, then another, and finally stuck at it at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (University of Applied Sciences) where I've mostly been teaching all things Linguistics and a whole lot of Literature (at Bachelor and Master level). The one constant since my early teens has been reading - reading, reading, reading :) (and playing music, so that's two constants)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Text selection for class: further headache...and aspirin (part 2)

I said last week that a distinction needs to be made between a Readable text and a Teachable one. Of course, my approach to using fiction in class (which you can read more about here ) puts a premium on developing critical thinking, awareness of the other and, generally speaking, focuses on aspects of citizenship, so those will be my criteria. In that sense, ‘Teachable’ means (but I simply repeat what I wrote earlier) a text that offers guidance and nuances, while leaving space for the reader to co-create the meaning of the text. And it is in that act of co-creation that a mind can flourish – that is, open up. This act of opening up is paramount here, since it really means ‘ Shifting your perspective ’, ‘ Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes ’, ‘ Trying to think like someone else ’, ‘ Trying to understand someone else ’ (among others). Those things require, from the reader, a certain dose of curiosity and willingness of course, something we teachers are here to foster,...
Read more

Fiction is real: the boy on the page can speak - why we shouldn't talk about 'characters' developing

  Oscar Wilde: ‘It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors’ I was having a discussion with a student not long ago, about a novel and its main character, and how that character – a boy –   changes throughout the narrative. At some point, she exclaimed: ‘Ah, I see, this character has grown – he has developed!’. No, I said, it doesn’t pay to think that way. Instead, you should think: ‘That person has changed, that person has developed’- he’s not a character, he’s not made of cardboard or balsa wood, he’s not a Platonic shadow: he’s real, he lives and breathes like you and me. He’s alive . This idea that a made-up character, in a made-up situation, with made-up parents and friends and occupations, could be real, seems at first illogical. ‘No’ you say, he’s not real: he’s an invention, he’s got no blood in his made-up veins, no feelings in his made-up body and mind – he’s a character in a book of fiction, and as such he cannot exist for himself. His wo...
Read more

Five things I hate about you: AI and those small things that make us human

  Those apparently 'simple' tasks we delegate to Chatgpt will end up costing us more than we know In his 1994 noir novel ‘Gun, with occasional music’, the American writer Jonathan Lethem thought up a bleak version of the future in which the State makes the taking of a certain drug compulsory: that drug is called ‘Forgettol’, and it basically erases your memories, short or long, and makes it impossible to remember even basic facts about yourself, let alone others. That then leads to the invention of the ‘memory-box’: a device characters use to effectively externalize their brain. That memory-box stores all those memories your brain can’t handle; in fact, it stores all the information your brain can’t handle. The benefits for the state are obvious (no possibility of rebellion), but the effects on people and society are terrible: a fragmentation of one’s consciousness which leads to a fragmentation of the social fabric. Sounds familiar? When the printing press started to spre...
Read more