Automation Is the Wrong Word. AI Doesn’t Automate, It Autonomizes
Algorithm, virtual, and automation. Three words we use incorrectly. Three videos, one per word. Today: why we’re wrong to use “automation.”
Automation means making something automatic. A process that you used to do by hand, now a machine does it. Same steps, same result, every time. A washing machine is automation. A badge gate is automation. An email triggered by a purchase is automation. A happens, B follows. Predefined, repeatable, controllable.
The problem is when we use the same word for Artificial Intelligence. When we ask AI to answer customers, screen résumés, or analyze medical data, we’re not automating anything. We’re autonomizing. We’re telling a system to decide on its own.
The request no longer passes through a predefined sequence. It passes through the model’s training, its weights, whatever guardrails someone put in place or didn’t. The result isn’t predictable. It changes every time. It’s an autonomous decision. The difference is enormous, especially when it touches the real world.
If I automate a weapon, I press a button and it fires ten rounds. Always ten. Always when I press. If I autonomize a weapon, the system decides when to fire, at whom, and how many rounds. Based on what it “learned.”
If I automate a banking process, the transfer goes when the customer clicks send. If I autonomize it, the system decides whether to approve, block, or flag. And the money is real, as we said in the previous videos. Digital, but absolutely real.
When we say “we automated customer service with AI,” we’re hiding what actually happened. We gave a system the power to decide on our behalf. That’s not automation. That’s autonomy. We should say autonomize, so people understand we’re talking about systems that make autonomous decisions, that choose, that don’t just execute. That’s why this series is called Artificial Decisions.
What do you think?
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp-1XK8-snA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utzft_O_b9w
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