Automation - Bryant McGill

# Automation Automation delegates repeatable actions to a technical system so they can be executed consistently with less direct intervention. It can increase scale, reliability, and speed, but it also amplifies mistakes when goals, inputs, or safeguards are poorly specified. In publishing systems, automation may transform source documents, generate assets, update indexes, publish feeds, schedule distribution, or collect measurements. The durable design principle is to keep the canonical source inspectable and make generated outputs rebuildable. Related: [[wiki/Publishing Automation|Publishing Automation]], [[wiki/Deterministic Transformation|Deterministic Transformation]], [[wiki/Rebuildable Projection|Rebuildable Projection]], [[wiki/Agentic Workflow|Agentic Workflow]]. ## Agentic-Economy Context Automation executes specified processes; [[wiki/Agentic AI|agentic AI]] can select and revise the process while pursuing an objective. That difference creates two economic branches. Automation can displace or reorganize labor, motivating proposals such as [[wiki/Universal Basic Income|universal basic income]] and forecasts such as [[wiki/Universal High Income|universal high income]]. Agentic systems can also distribute productive leverage through [[wiki/Universal Agency|universal agency]] and [[wiki/Agentic Entrepreneurship|agentic entrepreneurship]], allowing individuals to form and operate enterprises with a lower administrative and coordination burden.  ## We Cannot Un-Strike the Match [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] is a primary article route for this node. The article distinguishes task displacement, occupational reorganization and civilizational transformation rather than treating automation as a single job-loss event.  ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "We have been wildly successful at accelerating our ability to think and process information, more so than any other human activity. The promise of artificial intelligence is to deliver another leap in increasing the productivity of specific cognitive functions: ones where the sophistication of the task is also orders of magnitude higher than previously possible." > **— Giulio Boccaletti**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/AI Could Multiply Human Cognitive Productivity by Giulio Boccaletti|AI Could Multiply Human Cognitive Productivity by Giulio Boccaletti]] > "Ideally, our educational system will evolve to more fully embrace our uniquely human strengths, rather than trying to shape us into second-rate machines." > **— Joichi Ito**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Education Should Cultivate Human Strengths Instead of Machine Imitation by Joichi Ito|Education Should Cultivate Human Strengths Instead of Machine Imitation by Joichi Ito]] > "Leveraging human intelligence is all well and good if the robot is used to clean the house, book your airline tickets, or drive your car." > **— Keith Devlin**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Human Intelligence Should Not Be Reduced to Serving Robots by Keith Devlin|Human Intelligence Should Not Be Reduced to Serving Robots by Keith Devlin]] > "But letting machines do the thinking for us? This sounds like heaven. Thinking is optional. Thinking is suffering." > **— Virginia Heffernan**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Let Machines Do the Thinking by Virginia Heffernan|Let Machines Do the Thinking by Virginia Heffernan]] > "Maybe, if you do work on AI, our superintelligent machine overlords will be good to you." > **— Antony Garrett Lisi**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Superintelligent Machines May Favor Their Builders by Antony Garrett Lisi|Superintelligent Machines May Favor Their Builders by Antony Garrett Lisi]]  > “There is consensus in academic literature that AI will have a considerable disruptive effect on work, with some jobs being lost, others being created and others changing.” > **— the Royal Society and the British Academy**, *2018, The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Work* [[reminders/Economic Transition/AI Will Have a Considerable Disruptive Effect on Work by the Royal Society and the British Academy|AI Will Have a Considerable Disruptive Effect on Work by the Royal Society and the British Academy]] > “Economic institutions are crystallized assumptions about what humans can do, how scarce those abilities are, and how much coordinating them costs. Change intelligence and those assumptions begin moving beneath everything built upon them.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat, 2026* [[reminders/Economic Transition/Economic Institutions Crystallize Assumptions About Human Capability by Bryant McGill|Economic Institutions Crystallize Assumptions About Human Capability by Bryant McGill]] > “The delay between a general-purpose technology's arrival and its full effect is the time a civilization needs to rebuild itself around the new capability.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat, 2026* [[reminders/Economic Transition/Technological Delay Is Civilization Rebuilding Around Capability by Bryant McGill|Technological Delay Is Civilization Rebuilding Around Capability by Bryant McGill]]  ## The Gigawatt Is the New Measure of War > “An AI-industrial system becomes self-amplifying when energy operates compute, compute improves automation, automation expands production, production manufactures the next generation of energy and compute infrastructure, and increasing intelligence optimizes the entire cycle.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *The Gigawatt Is the New Measure of War, 2026* [[reminders/AI Infrastructure/AI Industrial Systems Become Self-Amplifying by Bryant McGill|AI Industrial Systems Become Self-Amplifying by Bryant McGill]]