Automation
Automation is the use of control systems such as computers and generative artificial intelligence to operate industrial machinery and perform processes, replacing human operators. In the scope of industrialization, it is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provides human operators with machinery to assist them with the physical requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well.
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Quotes
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- Anything that can be automatically done for you can be automatically done to you.
- Wyland's Law of Automation
- Quoted by Pournelle, Jerry (December 18, 2000). "Mail 132". Chaos Manor Musings. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.
- Besides black art, there is nothing left in the United States but automation and mechanization.
- Federico García Lorca, Poet in New York
- As the bourgeoisie, by means of its capital, completely monopolizes all new inventions, every new machine, instead of shortening the hours of labor and enhancing the prosperity and happiness of all, causes, on the contrary, dismissal from employment for some, reduction of wages for others and an increased and intensified state of misery for the entire proletariat.
- Johann Most, The Beast of Property (1884)
- Where you have machines, then you get certain kinds of problems; where you get certain kinds of problems, then you find a heart warped by these problems. Where you get a heart warped, its purity and simplicity are disturbed. When purity and simplicity are disturbed, then the spirit is alarmed and an alarmed spirit is no place for the Tao to dwell. It isn't that I don't know of these machines, but I would be ashamed to use one.
- Zhuangzi, The Book of Chuang Tzu, as translated by M. Palmer, et. al. (Penguin: 1996), p. 99
- If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, [...]; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.
- Aristotle, Politics, Book I, part 4 (1920 translation by Benjamin Jowett)
- Popularly simplified to "when the looms spin by themselves, we'll have no need for slaves".
- AI and robots will replace all jobs.
- Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store.
- (About Amazon's plan to automate 75% of its operations) It’s insane to think that a human will pack and ship boxes in ten years — it’s game over folks.
- In the short term, AI will destroy a lot of jobs. In In the long term, like every other technological revolution, I assume we will figure out completely new things to do.
- As quoted in Sam Altman says he is just waiting to be replaced as OpenAI CEO, only matter of..., The Times of India (November 6, 2025)
- If you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week, that’s probably OK. If you free up human labor, you can help elder people better, have smaller class sizes – you know, the demand for labor to do good things is still there. And then if you ever get beyond that, you have a lot of leisure time and you’ll have to figure out what to do with it.
- Bill Gates, as quoted in Bill Gates teases the possibility of a 3-day work week where ‘machines can make all the food and stuff’ (November 23, 2023)
- There’s going to be more free time. If you believe the premise that humans are social animals, they’re going to have to do something. They can’t just sit at home, so they’ll go to music, they’ll go to sports and they’ll go to my live event.
- Ari Emanuel, as quoted in Preston Fore, Like Bill Gates, this sports billionaire says a 3-day work week is on the horizon thanks to AI—but you won’t be bored doing nothing at home, Fortune (October 16, 2025)
