What is Augmented Intelligence?

Augmented intelligence pairs your judgment with the machine's speed. Does that keep you in charge, or quietly sideline you? Try it below. The point isn't the AI — it's what you do with the time it gives back.

Beginner · 3 min read

A question to carry in: if AI is a tool you direct, what should you hand off and what should you keep? Hand it the volume, keep the judgment — and decide where every decision that matters belongs.

Here it is in one real job. Maria runs a busy clinic and owes the board a report on 400 patient comments by Friday. Try each way of getting it done:

Who should do this job? Slide the work between Maria and the AI.

Hand to the AI 0%

Maria reviews the AI's work before it ships

Speed slow

Got it right spot on

At 0% to the AI, Maria reads all 400 comments herself: spot-on, but it eats the whole day.

Maria alone: accurate but slow. AI alone with no one checking: instant, but it mislabels comments and the mistakes ship. The middle — AI sorts the 400, Maria reviews and makes the calls — is fast and right. That pairing is augmented intelligence.

Did any setting fill both bars? The one that does is where the machine handles the volume and you keep the judgment (the priorities, the mistakes only a person would catch, the final call). "AI that replaces you" is the middle button: fast, but with no one in the loop, its confident errors sail straight through. Slide it again if you'd draw the line elsewhere.

Maria's a stand-in, not a promise. Where the line really falls depends on the work itself, how well you steer the tool — and how well it knows when to back off and hand you the wheel.

Built so you get it by changing it — Bret Victor's idea of an explorable explanation.

When you hand work to AI, what do you keep and what do you give away?

Give away the volume — the repetitive, mechanical work. Keep the judgment — context, priorities, ethics, and the final call.

Try it on your own work

This only clicks when you do it on something real. Take one task from this week:

Write the task in one line.
Split it into volume (repetitive, mechanical — could be drafted, sorted, or searched) and judgment (needs your context, ethics, taste, or final call).
Decide which volume parts you'd hand to AI — and the exact point where you'd stay in the loop to verify, the way Maria did.

That split is the move to practise. Do it five times this week and see whether it stops being an exercise and becomes a habit.