I'm getting pretty burned out on hearing this analogy. It seems to stem from a basic confusion between tools and toys. Tools don't constrain your use by dictating output; they help you speed up solving new problems. Toys create environments that shoehorn you into their prefabricated set of solutions. The feeling of gratification from making something nice with a toy is a placebo for the gratification of solving a real problem, and a big part of the drag we're experiencing on creative problem solving these days is the replacement of free-form solving with puzzle-solving. Puzzles, like AI prompts, have solutions that exist in advance in a latent space, and their discovery promotes a form of gamification but doesn't ever till any fresh soil. Being great at playing a game can never approximate being halfway good at writing a game. Discovering Will Wright's philosophy embedded in the best way to play SimCity should only be a step on the road to writing your own SimCity, not an end in itself. SimCity is a toy, not a tool, despite its being a fun stepping stone for future urban planners. One would never want urban planners to rely on it to make their decisions, because deep assumptions are baked into it. Same with ChatGPT. Many, many assumptions based on a snapshot of the world are baked into its output.

Whereas a pencil has no assumptions whatsoever, and no bias towards what you'll do with it, and offers no suggestions that might funnel you in some direction. That is what good tools are like.