LESSON 1 OF 6
Nobody is watching
BY THE END OF THIS LESSON
Judge whether a task should run unattended at all.
Assisted and automated are different things
Using AI to draft a reply is assisted work: you are there, you read it, you fix it. If it produces something odd you notice immediately and the cost is a few seconds.
An automation sends the reply. The same odd output now reaches a customer, and it will keep reaching customers until somebody happens to look.
What makes a task safe to automate
- Safe: A bad output is visible
- Safe: A bad output is cheap
- Safe: A bad output is reversible
- Check this: A wrong figure to a client
Ask what happens on the worst day, not the average one. A task is a reasonable candidate when a bad output is visible, cheap and reversible.
Filing something in the wrong folder is all three. Sending a wrong figure to a client is none of them.
The draft-and-hold pattern
- Generate the reply
- Leave it as a draft
- A human check on the last step
Most tasks that fail the test can still be automated up to the last step. Generate the reply and leave it as a draft. Prepare the invoice and queue it for approval. Sort the ticket and flag it rather than closing it.
You keep almost all of the time saved, because the work was in the preparing, and you keep the human check on the one step where being wrong is expensive.
WORKED EXAMPLE
FULLY AUTOMATED, BADLY CHOSEN
When a support email arrives, generate a reply and send it.
AUTOMATED UP TO THE LAST STEP
When a support email arrives: classify it, look up the customer, draft a reply in our tone, and save it as a draft addressed to them. A person opens the drafts folder, reads, and sends. On a bad day the failure is a draft nobody sends.
Almost all of the time saved was in classifying, looking up and drafting. Sending was seconds. The second version keeps the saving and moves the one irreversible step back to a person.
YOUR TURN
Test one of your own candidates against the worst day.
RUN THIS
I am considering automating this: [describe the task and what it would do unattended]. Ask me what a bad output would look like, who would see it first, what it would cost, and whether it could be undone. Then tell me whether to automate it fully, automate it up to a draft, or not at all — and say which step is the irreversible one.
What a good result looks like
If you cannot name who would notice a bad output, that is the answer: it should stop at a draft. Anything that sends, pays, deletes or publishes should come back as "hold for approval".
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
Answer all 3 correctly to complete this lesson.
1. What is the real difference between assisted and automated work?
2. Which three properties make a task reasonable to automate?
3. Why does draft-and-hold keep most of the benefit?
REMEMBER THIS
Automate up to the irreversible step, and leave that one to a person.