The Machine works well as a metaphor for various technological advancements.
First and most obvious, it is a metaphor for any machine replacing skilled, valuable labor. Yumi brings up the possibility of machines replacing weavers, seamstresses, and farmers. This is absolutely something that happened in the real world, and it caused serious problems. The original Luddites were founded because not only were machines taking their jobs, but children were being paid starvation wages to work these machines in unsafe conditions. As Painter points out, eventually a society gets past these problems... if they don't screw up so badly that they destroy themselves first.
Second, the Machine is a metaphor for Large Language Models and other "AI art." They can create a product that is correct in all technical details, and that product might even work perfectly for its intended purpose. But ultimately, they will never understand what they are actually creating, which really brings up the question of what the point of creating it is. And on the more practical scale, they will find it extremely difficult to adapt to changing situations to create something new.
Finally, the Machine is a Paperclip Maximizer, the large-scale version of Grey Goo. It was given the order to stack stones, and therefore it does absolutely nothing but stack stones, create smaller machines to stack stones, and protect its ability to stack stones. It has no ability or even desire to do anything else, because it doesn't desire anything.
Painter decided to follow "Yumi's way" and asked his friends for help. All told, they managed to gather thirty-sevenpainters. The same number as Yumi gathered spirits at the start of the story.
Why is a lot of focus given to how Yumi changed Nikaro’s body physically, but none vice versa? Not just because Design isn’t there to explain it, but because they’re not playing by the same rules.
The "liberal" yoki-hijo get days off. If Yumi had also been liberal, and had happened to take the day the machine repeated off, then she would never have done any stacking and wouldn't have got hundreds of years of practice.
the large-scale version of Grey Goo. It was given the order to stack stones, and therefore it does absolutely nothing but stack stones, create smaller machines to stack stones, and protect its ability to stack stones. It has no ability or even desire to do anything else, because it doesn't desire anything.