---
type: "article"
title: "Signal ping : Automation was never the point"
summary: "The future is not automated, it is iterative."
newsletter: "Signals from Our Futures Past"
newsletter_handle: "mamund"
newsletter_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/mamund"
author: "Mike Amundsen (@mamund)"
published: "2026-01-14T11:31:10.000Z"
canonical_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/mamund/a/signal-ping-automation-was-never-the-point"
markdown_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/mamund/a/signal-ping-automation-was-never-the-point.md"
chat_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/mamund/a/signal-ping-automation-was-never-the-point/chat"
source_url: "https://mamund.substack.com/p/signal-ping-automation-was-never"
body_source: "imported"
likes: 0
replies: 0
body_words: 90
---

# Signal ping : Automation was never the point

[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vyZz!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6adab7c3-15ee-4b14-920e-d9bfda536686_8192x4464.jpeg)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vyZz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6adab7c3-15ee-4b14-920e-d9bfda536686_8192x4464.jpeg)

[Andrej Karpathy](https://karpathy.ai)’s year-in-review is most interesting where it is least triumphant. The shift he describes is not toward hands-off systems, but toward tighter feedback loops between humans and machines. In his most recent telling, GenAI shortens the distance between idea and evaluation, which means thinking becomes continuous instead of episodic. This makes genAI less about replacing people and more about changing the cadence of work; a pattern with deep roots in earlier tool revolutions.

Read the article here:
[https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/year-in-review-2025/](https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/year-in-review-2025/)

Takeaway : The future is not automated, it is iterative.

***

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