There is a quiet ‘category error’ sitting at the centre of much of the AI conversation right now, and it is shaping decisions that will outlive the people making them.
We keep calling AI a tool.
Tools are picked up and put down. Tools sit in a drawer until needed. A hammer does not change what a wall is, what a house means, or how a neighbourhood feels. The framing is comfortable because it puts us in charge: we choose, we wield, we set down. I would argue, though, that it is the wrong frame. It is wrong in the way that calling electricity “a better candle” was wrong in 1890. The artefact is recognisable; the substrate it creates is not.
What we are actually building, and stitching into the daily fabric of work and life, is starting to behave more like cognitive infrastructure. Something that increasingly mediates how we perceive, decide, coordinate, and remember. You do not “use” infrastructure the way you use a tool. You live inside it. The question of who designs it, who maintains it, and who gets to question it becomes a different kind of question entirely. This distinction is not academic. It changes the strategy.
This article on artificial intelligence as a cognitive infrastructure framework is written by Rohit Mahadevu, AI and Digital Transformation Consultant at Texavi Innovative Solutions. Read on…
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