Doorman fallacy

noun phrase

The mistake of assuming that because a doorman opens the door, opening the door is the whole job. Automating the visible task can hide everything else the role was carrying.

Also known as task–job confusion

The doorman fallacy is the mistake of assuming that because a doorman opens the door, opening the door is the job. A doorman also recognises residents, screens strangers, receives packages, notices when something is wrong and holds the order of a building. Automate the door and you have removed the most visible task, not necessarily the role. The same mistake runs through arguments about AI and work: jobs look like bundles of tasks on paper, so a machine finishing the obvious one can appear to have swallowed the whole. The missing work is usually context, judgement and relationship, the things that were load-bearing precisely because nobody bothered to list them.