The hottest Automation Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics

Why hasn’t AI changed everything

Generating Conversation • 70 implied HN points • 26 Jun 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. AI hasn't changed everything yet because people have different expectations about what it can do. Many casual users don't see big life changes despite using AI tools.
  2. To get better results from AI, we need to be more specific in our requests. Providing more context helps AI deliver useful answers.
  3. AI works best when it's focused on specific tasks. Applications targeted at solving clear problems have already shown great success, while broader uses often fall short.

LLM Links

In My Tribe • 167 implied HN points • 23 Dec 24
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. AI-generated podcasts can share information in new ways, like converting written essays into audio. This shows how AI can create engaging content without much input.
  2. Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle to learn new concepts as effectively as humans do because they rely on past data. Humans continue to adapt and learn from everyday experiences.
  3. The potential economic impact of robots is huge, especially for tasks like cleaning and driving. The market for humanoid robots could reach trillions, and they might also help reduce accidents.

#3 - Big AI Goes to the White House + Pandora's AI Box? + AI Treaties

Navigating AI Risks • 117 implied HN points • 05 May 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. The White House is engaging with top AI companies to discuss risks and set guidelines for responsible AI use.
  2. Leaked documents show concerns about open-source AI catching up to big companies, raising issues about model accessibility and misuse.
  3. Generative AI is being used to automate tasks, raising concerns about job displacement and income inequality across various industries.

They Are Watching You

Stove Top • 117 implied HN points • 18 May 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Surveillance technology is advancing rapidly, posing a threat to privacy
  2. Ron DeSantis is struggling to expand his political base, especially among Asian voters
  3. AI technology is disrupting the writing industry, leading to job losses for writers
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Why Job Displacement Predictions are Wrong: Explanations of Cognitive Automation

Scaling Knowledge • 117 implied HN points • 30 May 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Predictions about job displacement due to large language models are often wrong because they lack explanations of how LLMs and human intelligence differ.
  2. Jobs are more likely to be augmented than automated by technologies like LLMs, as human creativity and autonomy are essential in many fields like software engineering, medicine, law, and media production.
  3. Regulations on AI and cognitive automation may hinder progress and knowledge creation, leading to unforeseen consequences and limiting the potential benefits of such technologies.

Will AI replace programmers?

Arpit’s Newsletter • 117 implied HN points • 12 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Throughout history, humans have used technology to simplify tasks and advance.
  2. Job hierarchy sees automation start with mundane tasks and gradually move up.
  3. AI is enhancing programming tasks but complete job replacement will be a gradual process.

Quality Engineering Basics: Quality Metrics

QUALITY BOSS • 39 implied HN points • 25 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Metrics help show how good a product is and can lead to improvements. They can boost quality and user happiness.
  2. Bug metrics track issues like how many bugs are found after release and how long they take to fix. This helps teams focus on areas needing help.
  3. Product and automation metrics can include customer satisfaction and how well automated tests work. They help understand what's going right or wrong in the product.

AI SOC Automation isn't the right problem to solve

Frankly Speaking • 152 implied HN points • 14 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Focusing on better detection engineering is key in security operations. It helps identify threats more effectively rather than just automating processes.
  2. Many traditional security operations centers (SOCs) may not be necessary for most companies. Smaller, more efficient models or managed detection services can be better alternatives.
  3. The future of SOCs is likely to involve fewer human analysts and more automation, emphasizing custom detections that fit the specific needs of a business.

How to Deploy Microsoft Sentinel Effectively

Rod’s Blog • 59 implied HN points • 01 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. To get the most out of Microsoft Sentinel, organizations should carefully plan and prepare their deployment by assessing security needs and goals.
  2. Choosing the right subscription and pricing model is crucial for optimizing the benefits of Microsoft Sentinel, based on data requirements, user protection, and features needed.
  3. Effective management of Microsoft Sentinel involves monitoring data ingestion, leveraging AI and ML capabilities, automating workflows, and learning from security incidents and feedback.

Juggling Robots

Bram’s Thoughts • 78 implied HN points • 20 Dec 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Building a juggling robot to juggle five balls is challenging.
  2. Consider using a CoreXY mechanism for moving the hands efficiently.
  3. Utilize pneumatics for controlling the strength of throws in the juggling robot.

Why I’m excited about AI-assisted human feedback

Musings on the Alignment Problem • 459 implied HN points • 29 Mar 22
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. The use of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has been successful in aligning models with human intent like following instructions.
  2. Training AI systems on tasks that are hard for humans to evaluate may not be directly solvable with RLHF due to challenges in generalization and evaluation.
  3. AI-assisted human feedback, like recursive reward modeling (RRM), can help tackle complex tasks by involving human evaluation in aligning AI systems.

Controllable Agents For RAG With Human In The Loop Chat

Cobus Greyling on LLMs, NLU, NLP, chatbots & voicebots • 19 implied HN points • 27 May 24
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Controllable agents improve how we interact with complex questions. They help make sense of complicated tasks by allowing step-by-step execution.
  2. Human In The Loop (HITL) chat lets users guide the process and provides feedback after each step. This means users can refine their inquiries live without long waits.
  3. The new tools from LlamaIndex aim to make working with large datasets easier by offering more control. This helps users monitor and adjust the process as needed.

Why Selling AI Automation to Hedge Funds Is Hard

Enterprise AI Trends • 63 implied HN points • 29 Jun 25
💼 Business Automation
  1. Selling AI to hedge funds is quite challenging. They often lack success stories and top-down support can make a difference.
  2. Investment managers face unique barriers when considering new technology like AI. Understanding these barriers can help tailor your sales approach.
  3. Many companies have struggled to sell AI in finance, leading some to pivot their strategies. It's important to learn from these experiences to succeed.

From Kubernetes to AI maximalism | Stacklok's Craig McLuckie

Dev Interrupted • 14 implied HN points • 25 Nov 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Treat AI like engineering — insist on reproducibility, audit trails, and measurable quality so models aren’t just probabilistic parrots.
  2. Use AI to amplify good habits, not hide gaps — have models critique your solutions Socratically and keep humans in charge of architecture to avoid accelerating technical debt.
  3. Replace the "glue person" with composable AI workflows and agent-assisted cleanup, and measure adoption and impact so you can reclaim focus and reduce coordination toil.

($) Stargate is America’s Sovereign AI

Interconnected • 138 implied HN points • 22 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Stargate is seen as a key AI technology for America, focusing on improving national capabilities. It aims to make the U.S. more self-sufficient in AI development.
  2. The project emphasizes the importance of sovereign technology, meaning that the U.S. can control and utilize its own AI resources without relying heavily on foreign technologies.
  3. Community support and subscriptions play a crucial role in sharing insights about such technologies, encouraging more people to get involved and informed.

Automaticity, Mega-Machine, Planetary Super-Organism, Nirvana, Hive Mind

Daniel Pinchbeck’s Newsletter • 9 implied HN points • 16 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Skills learned through practice become automatic and habitual, letting our conscious mind focus on other things.
  2. Modern civilization acts like a mega-machine or technosphere that invisibly handles basic survival tasks, removing those labor demands from individual awareness and action.
  3. AI threatens to extend that automaticity to thought itself by outsourcing cognitive and administrative work to networks, which could free people but also risk loss of autonomy or a hive-mind–like planetary system.

Cursor vs Anthropic multi-agent coding experiments

Peter’s Substack • 2 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Use a hierarchical decomposition where high-level planners break goals into subplanners and isolated workers so complex coding tasks are split, owned, and driven to completion recursively.
  2. Coordination and correctness are the main bottlenecks for parallel agents: naive locking and expecting perfect commits cause conflicts and serialization, so robust coordination and tolerance for imperfect commits are needed to scale.
  3. Human input still matters a lot—clear, prioritized instructions, tests, and failure analysis are essential to guide agents, enforce performance and resource limits, and catch subtle bugs agents miss.

Why You’re Wrong About AI Data

From the New World • 70 implied HN points • 03 Jun 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Having a lot of data doesn't really create a strong advantage for companies. It can make it easier for others to copy their features, turning unique ideas into common standards.
  2. The belief that you can create a monopoly by having specialized data isn't true. What often happens is that competitors can quickly catch up and do the same thing.
  3. Making complicated business processes clear and usable by AI is valuable, but it doesn't protect a company's secrets. Once a process is automated, others can figure it out easily.

The Glitch Workers

Anima Mundi • 41 implied HN points • 13 Aug 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Many workers today feel stuck between their skills and what the job market needs, often referred to as 'glitch workers.' They're not unemployed, but they struggle to find meaningful work as jobs change too quickly.
  2. As technology advances, it often prioritizes efficiency over human needs. This leads to people feeling overwhelmed and mentally exhausted as they try to keep up with fast-paced demands.
  3. Instead of just adapting to these systems, some people are choosing to step back and find ways to live and work that align better with their own values and rhythms.

Acceleration With Consequences

Kathy PM • 7 implied HN points • 03 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. AI is shifting from one-off features to ongoing relationships, so tools will be judged by how they behave and fit into users' lives over weeks, not just by single outputs.
  2. Agency and control matter more than raw intelligence; the hardest design choices are about when an AI should act, when it should stay quiet, and who gets to decide.
  3. Working code alone won’t win — teams need understandable, maintainable systems and clear mental models, because loss of trust and confusing handoffs will drive people away faster than bugs.

Microsoft Sentinel SOC 101: How to Detect and Mitigate a VIP Account that has Multiple Failed Logons within a Threshold with Microsoft Sentinel

Rod’s Blog • 99 implied HN points • 17 Oct 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Microsoft Sentinel helps in detecting and mitigating brute-force attacks on VIP accounts, which are high-level privileged user accounts in organizations.
  2. Brute-force attacks involve trying multiple passwords to gain unauthorized access to accounts or systems, making VIP accounts attractive targets.
  3. Organizations can use Microsoft Sentinel to set thresholds for failed logon attempts, create custom detection rules, investigate alerts triggered by VIP accounts, and take necessary response actions.

A minimal viable product for alignment

Musings on the Alignment Problem • 399 implied HN points • 29 Mar 22
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Progress in AI can expand the range of problems humanity can solve, addressing the limitation of human capabilities.
  2. Automating alignment research using AI systems can accelerate progress by overcoming talent bottlenecks and enabling faster evaluation and generation of solutions.
  3. An alignment MVP approach is less ambitious than solving all alignment problems but can still lead to solutions by leveraging automation and AI capabilities.

Microsoft Sentinel SOC 101: How to Detect and Mitigate Malware Attacks with Microsoft Sentinel

Rod’s Blog • 99 implied HN points • 20 Sep 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Malware attacks can result in data breaches, financial losses, and damage to an organization's reputation, underscoring the importance of robust security measures and tools like Microsoft Sentinel.
  2. Microsoft Sentinel offers customizable anomaly detection and User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) anomalies to identify and respond to potential threats effectively without complex tuning.
  3. Threat intelligence integration, data connectors, and built-in analytics rule templates in Microsoft Sentinel help organizations import, centralize, and leverage threat indicators to proactively detect and respond to malware attacks.

Microsoft Sentinel SOC 101: How to Detect and Mitigate Phishing Attacks with Microsoft Sentinel

Rod’s Blog • 99 implied HN points • 19 Sep 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Phishing attacks are a significant threat that targets human vulnerabilities and can lead to identity theft or financial fraud.
  2. Organizations can mitigate phishing attacks by adopting a 'defense in depth' strategy that includes user education, email filtering, and incident response planning.
  3. Utilizing Microsoft Sentinel, Kusto Query Language (KQL), and integrating with Microsoft 365 Threat Protection can enhance proactive threat hunting and response capabilities against phishing attacks.

The Ghost in the Machine: How I learned to stop worrying and love the AI

Experiments with NLP and GPT-3 • 7 implied HN points • 02 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Don’t treat AI as a job-stealer but as a coworker; see it as augmentation that can take over repetitive tasks so people can focus on strategy, creativity, and emotional work.
  2. History shows resisting big technological shifts costs you — the industrial-era reluctance led to missed opportunities, and the AI change is much faster so adapting quickly is essential.
  3. Adoption fails when workers aren’t trained or are afraid, so companies must teach new workflows and treat AI like a fast, naive junior who needs clear instructions to be truly useful.

The Sequence Opinion #552: Seriously, What is an Agent?

TheSequence • 70 implied HN points • 29 May 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. The term 'AI agent' can mean many things, and different experts have different definitions. This shows that there is still a lot of discussion about what really makes an AI an agent.
  2. Some people think an AI agent should be able to plan and act on its own, while others see it as any system that uses language models or performs tasks. There is no clear agreement on this.
  3. The lines between traditional AI models and agents might be blurring, suggesting that future AI systems could include features of agents directly within them.

Saving Time Using Auto1111's API: Automated Workflow for XYZ Grids

followfox.ai’s Newsletter • 98 implied HN points • 27 May 23
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. An automated workflow using Auto1111's API can save time when generating XYZ comparison grids
  2. The process involves creating a CSV file with parameters for each grid and using a script to feed these parameters to Auto1111 through the API
  3. While this automated workflow can save time, it may not allow for immediate review and adjustments after each grid generation

Weekly Micro Market: Linkedin Automation Tools

Micro Markets Newsletter • 2 HN points • 29 Aug 24
💼 Business Automation
  1. LinkedIn automation tools help salespeople and recruiters connect with potential clients or candidates more efficiently by automating repetitive tasks like sending messages.
  2. This market is worth about $2-4 billion and has many competitors, but most tools struggle with user-friendliness, creating opportunities for new, simpler tools.
  3. Running these tools is complex and risky because they may violate LinkedIn's terms of service, but there's potential for innovation by creating complementary services that improve outreach success.

GALE Is A Next-Gen Generative AI Productivity Suite

Cobus Greyling on LLMs, NLU, NLP, chatbots & voicebots • 19 implied HN points • 15 May 24
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. GALE is a new AI tool that helps businesses automate tasks. This saves time and allows employees to focus on important work.
  2. It allows users to create temporary applications for short-term projects, which can be discarded afterward. This is great for quick tasks without long-term commitment.
  3. GALE can save companies money by reducing repetitive work and improving efficiency. This helps businesses grow and innovate.

Where Are The Robots?

Teaching computers how to talk • 110 implied HN points • 23 Feb 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Humanoid robots seem impressive in videos, but they aren't practical for everyday tasks yet. Many still struggle with simple actions like opening a fridge at home.
  2. Training robots in simulations is useful, but it doesn’t always translate well to the real world. Minor changes in the environment can cause trained robots to fail.
  3. Even if we could train robots better, it's unclear what tasks they could take over. Existing household machines already perform many tasks, and using robots for harmful jobs could be a better focus.

Beat your Bot: Building your Moat against AI

Musings on Markets • 2 HN points • 28 Aug 24
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. AI is getting better at doing mechanical tasks, but it struggles with intuitive ones. This means jobs that rely on creativity and adaptability are safer than those that are purely formulaic.
  2. Jobs that follow strict rules can be easily replaced by AI, while those that need human judgement and understanding of principles will be harder for AI to take over. This shows the value of being skilled in areas that require more complex thinking.
  3. To protect your job from AI, be a generalist instead of a specialist, practice telling stories around your work, and try not to rely too much on technology for reasoning. This can help you stay unique and valuable in a changing job landscape.

AI is thirstier than humans

storyvoyager • 8 implied HN points • 21 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. AI and other technologies are consuming more of our scarce resources like water, energy, and land, so they compete directly with humans for basic needs.
  2. In a market that rewards capital, resources flow to whatever is most profitable, meaning machines could get prioritized over human needs and people might lose access to resources even if they no longer have to work.
  3. Instead of technology being a tool for life, life risks becoming an appendage of technology, leaving humans freed from labor but trapped by technological consumption and limited freedom.

20260118

Curious futures (KGhosh) • 4 implied HN points • 18 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. AI is rapidly reshaping industries and work: companies are pivoting from old bets to AI services, and jobs are becoming more fractional and outcome-based as AI starts to behave like a new kind of employee.
  2. Communities can reclaim AI to protect and revive culture and language, showing technology can be used for cultural stewardship rather than just profit.
  3. The rush toward new tech exposes material, security, and social strains—so preserving human rhythms like rest, play, and collective care is essential for resilience.

The GenAI D&R Revolution Begins

Detection at Scale • 19 implied HN points • 13 May 24
🕹 Technology Automation
  1. Security companies at RSA are increasingly focusing on AI to enhance Detection and Response (D&R) processes.
  2. Automated Tier 1 Triage using autonomous SOC analysts can streamline alert triage and analysis, improving efficiency for SecOps teams.
  3. GenAI can also improve D&R through AI-powered chatbots for automating organizational Q&A and log summarization for quicker insights and analysis.