Where will the machine stop? I genuinely ask myself the question. 🍃🤖
A trajectory in 5 stages Link to heading
Until now, most companies mastered automation up to stage 3: automating a simple, repetitive, well-defined process. That was already a real step forward, and many were happy to stop there.
But today, stage 4 is taking over: systems are learning to generate their own automations. We no longer hand-code every rule — we describe a need, and the machine assembles the process.
And tomorrow? Stage 5 is coming, the one where AI agents autonomously orchestrate both needs and systems. From a simple human need to the autonomous reconfiguration of operational frameworks.
The infographic above sketches an imagined trajectory of this rise in autonomy.
The real question is no longer technical Link to heading
For a long time we asked: “how do we automate?”. That’s no longer the point.
The real question becomes: what room will be left for humans? Will we be reduced to mere supervisors? Or worse — will we become the obsolescence of our own system, the link eventually removed because it slows the loop down?
I don’t have a definitive answer. I think the human’s place is shifting, just as it shifted with every technical revolution: less execution, more decision, arbitration and responsibility. But this time the boundary is moving fast, and it now reaches design itself.
The debate is open. What’s your vision?