THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

A New Sort of Automation

• John

One of the problems with all the AI hype is that it tends to fall into the trap of selling AI as a way to be lazy. Even Apple succumbed to this, although the ads showing workers using Apple Intelligence to be lazy have since been removed from YouTube. But AI at its best allows you to amplify your existing skills by automating processes that would be too hard or time-consuming to do manually. If that sounds a lot like automation, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. Look, I get that AI is a threat to the climate, culture, and maybe even humanity itself. But used responsibly for automation, it can do some incredible things, too.

My approach to AI is as old as computing itself: leveraging machines to do the sort of things that they can do faster than any human can in order to work more efficiently. AI is important to the approach but doesn’t control it. Instead, I use it to help me develop tools faster and add a layer of non-deterministic filtering that enhances my results.