Rich mentions in another comment that he's talking about its embodiment in conversational systems purporting to be 'tools' for doing homework, research, coding, writing, etc.

What that means is that these are tools for ordering a sandwich, but not for making one. The making of the sandwich was automated, and you're not making a sandwich using a tool to do so, you're ordering one and someone else is making the sandwich for you.

Back to coding, if you use AI agents to generate your code, it means you're not coding anymore, you've automated that, you're ordering code and maybe sending it back to ask for a better one if you didn't like it. Meaning you've lost the fine grained control, the tactile feedback, the learning opportunity, the experience, etc. You have gained the benefit of automation instead, unlike those of a good tool, which make you better at doing the work, automation likely makes you worse at it.

I don't think he's implying automation is bad, just that you should understand that the dynamic of automating something is very different from that of doing the thing using a tool.

I guess according to his logic they would be tools for interacting with an automation. Like the button on a car wash kiosk. You could just as well holler and the man turns it on.