AI/LLM/thoughts/the master's tools

"The Master's Tools" is a reference to this quote (source to be checked):

«survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.» — Audre Lorde

The way I understand Lorde's argument is that if we work within the framework of the rulers, we just reinforce it. "The master's tools" were designed to maintain and reinforce that framework -- so when we use them, we're always going to be doing that in some way.

...but I don't think Lorde meant for the metaphor to be applied this way, i.e. to all inventions that happen to have emerged from abusive institutions. By the same token, we could say the internet (or electricity, or the printing press...) is a "master's tool", so we can't ever accomplish true change by using it to collaborate.

To Read

• https://www.activistgraduateschool.org/on-the-masters-tools
  • «In other words, she attempted to draft an ethical principle that would overthrow the status quo: We cannot disrupt our oppression using the logic that justifies our oppression. Lorde asked, “What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy?” And she responded, “It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.”»