Great questions, Jason. You won't be surprised to know that I, too, am suspicious of the distinction between doing and thinking. There is no better example than distinguishing between thinking and writing. I have what seems like absolutely brilliant thoughts in the shower. And when I start to write them down, I enter into a process in which the thinking and doing are integrated, and more challenging.
Nick has a post from a few months ago that I need to find that contrasts "automaticity" and agency. These features that do things by "taking over our computers" are not actually the actions of AI agents. That is an illusion. They are complex and flexible automations, and we should take care when using them, especially in situations where humans can be hurt by the results.
If we have learned anything about the automation of knowledge work in the past five years, it is that the more important and socially valuable the task, the more careful we should be in ensuring human judgement is guiding the work. Humans are not perfect, but at least they have the capacity to think about what they are doing.
I was really excited to write this for the newsletter!
Great questions, Jason. You won't be surprised to know that I, too, am suspicious of the distinction between doing and thinking. There is no better example than distinguishing between thinking and writing. I have what seems like absolutely brilliant thoughts in the shower. And when I start to write them down, I enter into a process in which the thinking and doing are integrated, and more challenging.
Nick has a post from a few months ago that I need to find that contrasts "automaticity" and agency. These features that do things by "taking over our computers" are not actually the actions of AI agents. That is an illusion. They are complex and flexible automations, and we should take care when using them, especially in situations where humans can be hurt by the results.
If we have learned anything about the automation of knowledge work in the past five years, it is that the more important and socially valuable the task, the more careful we should be in ensuring human judgement is guiding the work. Humans are not perfect, but at least they have the capacity to think about what they are doing.
These are great points, Rob! I think these ideas bout automaticity are really key. I need to find that one!
Found it. He had a series of posts, actually. Here is the first one: https://nickpotkalitsky.substack.com/p/ai-agents-are-really-ai-tools
Awesome. You're the best!