Tao, Pheasants and genAI

Looking up a different passage, I cam across this in Zhuangzi and thought it very apt for our times:

A pheasant of the marshes has to take ten steps to pick up a mouthful of food, and thirty steps to get a drink, but it does not seek to be nourished in a coop. Though its spirit would (there) enjoy a royal abundance, it does not think (such confinement) good.

I find myself talking to many people in HE - researchers, teachers, professional support - who tell me how genAI makes them more productive. (Often by telling me at length how they have clearly spent ages finding different tools and customising them instead of actually doing the job in hand - but that is a different matter).

I always ask them 'Why do you want to be more productive?' and 'Who benefits from your being more productive?'. Some answer the latter by talking about advancing their careers, but then the question becomes: 'Who benefits from career structures which drive you to be ever more productive?'

AI 'tools' are being forced upon us with all sots of promises of their benefits. We may be rightly suspicious of these claims, or we may find that some of these tools are helpful and even enjoyable to use, but no one¹ is offering them to us for our own good. They want us to become dependent upon their products, just as we collectively have done on other technologies, thereby giving these companies and their owners unimaginable² power and wealth.

All of that is meant to make them realise, as Zhuangzi saw, that it's a trap. Keeping your autonomy may be inconvenient, may mean declining the offer of a 'royal abundance', but losing it is worse.