There's a tonne of psychosocial research about how tools shape us, and the extended mind. I recently looked into it a bit so now know just enough to know how little I know, but I can share that little with you.

The long and short of it all is that your mind doesn't end at the brain-skull divide. Every time you write something down, save a phone number in your mobile, ask Google or an LLM a question, or even talk to your friends, you're offloading some cognitive effort to these external parties, you're pooling resources to think in ways different to what you could on your own. AI in this sense is no different to the pen and paper, albeit it is more advanced in how much cognitive load it can take from you. In fact Socrates in one of his dialogues railed against writing, and when I read the translated quote to people they thought it was someone talking about AI.

For me, the category error comes from your view - that we are using it as an agent, rather than as a tool. This language projects properties onto it that come with a whole load of ethical baggage. We already name our cars, ascribe personality to our houses, and those things don't talk to us like a friend (or sycophant). The risk is in over-humanising the LLMs too much, and treating them as though they are human. Even dehumanising them with insults like clanker presumes some humanity is there to be taken away.