Artificial Intelligence Is Still Just Automation

Ten years later, a look at the argument against AGI

Artificial Intelligence Is Still Just Automation
(Written in 2016 — still true in 2025)

When I first wrote this almost a decade ago, “AI” was already a cultural Rorschach test. To some, it was exciting and futuristic. To others, it was ominous, Orwellian, or just marketing spin. Automation, by contrast, was the unglamorous cousin that conjured images of soulless machines taking over the last shreds of human purpose.

But from the start, my view was simple: what we call “AI” today is still just automation. And automation is not a mind. That argument has aged better than I expected. In the years since, we’ve seen an explosion of so-called AI — from self-driving cars to ChatGPT — yet the distinction between AI and automation remains almost universally misunderstood.

Recently, Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, repeat the mantra: “AI is automation technology.” In 2016, that was a deflating — even scandalous — claim. In 2025, it’s part of the vanguard of the New Resistance.

So yes: AI is automation technology. Just like I said. Here’s the original, now modified, 2016 essay.