Definition
Automation uses AI to substitute for human work, augmentation uses it to extend what a person can do. The distinction the whole positioning rests on. The exchange it sits inside is the cognitive new deal.
What is at stake
Leaders default to automation because the arithmetic is simpler. Ethan Mollick puts it plainly: when leaders see studies showing productivity gains of 30 percent from AI, their instinct is to cut 30 percent of the workforce. episcope's reading is about time. Automation saves it. Augmentation invests it in what was not possible before.
Where the word came from
- Substitutes and complements in labour economicslong-standing
- Automate against informateShoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine, 1988, the ancestor by thirty-four years and sharper
- The Turing TrapBrynjolfsson, 2022
- The time readingepiscope
How episcope came to it
Brynjolfsson's Turing Trap essay, 2022, though the substitute-versus-complement idea is older in economics.
What to watch for
The distinction is Brynjolfsson's. The time reading, that automation saves time while augmentation spends it on what was not possible before, is episcope's.
Papers and articles behind it
Brynjolfsson, E. (2022). The Turing Trap: The Promise and Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence. Daedalus, 151(2). Also arXiv:2201.04200.