I totally agree that the taboo here is downstream of economic anxiety. But I don’t think “augmentation vs automation” is a useful binary because the same technology that augments me, a freelance writer, can automate a freelance editor. The same technology that augments a senior coder can automate a junior.

I‘d prefer we focus our critique on companies that sloppily replace people with AI vs. using the same number of AI-assisted people to accomplish more. And whether they do that is mostly downstream of whether demand is growing for that industry — in media’s case, mostly no, in tech’s case, mostly yes.

(And in my personal case, I was not going to hire an editor for my Substack posts anyway. Don’t come after me because you’re mad at your boss.)