The tools you use shape what you do. Clearly having access to a screwdriver, or to a programming language, allows you to do things that you couldn’t otherwise do.
But those tools also shape what you want to do. In your mind, having the right powerful tool brings something into the realm of possibility.
And so there is this wonderful cycle: We refine our tools, and then they refine us. And we then use those tools to build the next level of powerful tools.
There might be a break in this pattern with our increasing reliance on A.I. Because A.I. is presented to us as pretty much a black box (unlike a screwdriver or a programming language), it may not be giving us the right kind of working knowledge that we need to make new and better tools.
Still, it is possible that our continual use of A.I. will end up — in the long run — giving us new kinds of skills that are not yet understood. In that case, our species’ wonderful power of toolmaking may end up taking an odd turn or two, but it will probably continue.