Patrick Erichsen(@patrickerichsen):One of the blurriest boundaries with AI is when assistance turns into automation, and when that is desirable I’m fine to have an agent automate much of my software engineering work. But do I want an agent to automate my friendships? No - but where is that line crossed? Is using a calendar to remember a friend’s birthday “automation”? What about helping draft the first pass of a birthday card? We all want AI to automate the drudgery in our lives but it’s easy to slip into automating the parts that should remain human

Patrick Erichsen

@patrickerichsen

Member of Technical Staff @openclaw 🦞 Prev Founding Engineer @continuedev (acquired by Cursor)

Joined February 2020

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Patrick Erichsen@patrickerichsen

2026.10.29 02:20

One of the blurriest boundaries with AI is when assistance turns into automation, and when that is desirable I’m fine to have an agent automate much of my software engineering work. But do I want an agent to automate my friendships? No - but where is that line crossed? Is using a calendar to remember a friend’s birthday “automation”? What about helping draft the first pass of a birthday card? We all want AI to automate the drudgery in our lives but it’s easy to slip into automating the parts that should remain human