Beyond automation

Ethan Mollick has made several good points in his latest article about what he's called the next generation of AI.

For one thing, it helps us understand how quickly the cost-performance graph is moving. That is, when you're thinking ahead, don't work within a static framework.

Costs with decreasing marginal returns

On the other hand, even if you assume we're still in the hype stage where marketing takes center stage, relate to AI as an enhancer and not simply an automator.

This shift has profound implications for how organizations should approach AI integration. First, the focus needs to move from task automation to capability augmentation. Instead of asking "what tasks can we automate?" leaders should ask "what new capabilities can we unlock?" And they will need to build the capacity in their own organizations to help explore, and develop these changes.

Ethan Mollick — A new generation of AIs: Claude 3.7 and Grok 3

Since we're still in the exploration stage, what you're most interested in is generating skin-to-skin contact without looking for any specific metric.

Your KPI is precisely JUST THAT: exploring, touching, learning, playing, tinkering...