Arvind Narayanan: steering AI from an 'automate everything' agenda toward human augmentation
mikeflache · x · 2026-10-16
In a research agenda essay on their 'AI as Normal Technology' Substack, Stanford economist Gabriel Unger and Princeton's Arvind Narayanan challenge Silicon Valley's implicit technological determinism that AI is almost entirely about automating human labor. They argue AI, like any technology, can develop in multiple directions: total automation is one, but human augmentation and amplifying human-AI team collaboration are equally viable. They contend many maximalist attempts to fully automate all work are unpromising on technical and economic grounds, and too much AI research chases automation over augmentation — a bias rooted in both economic incentives and the deeper intellectual culture of computer science.
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