Twilight Factory
Ethan and Lilach Mollick's model for AI agent teams that do most of the work but deliberately pull humans back in at the moments that matter.
A dark factory is a plant so automated you can switch the lights off, because nobody is there. Applied to AI agents, it means systems that run end to end with humans only setting the goal and checking the output. The Twilight Factory is the deliberate alternative: agents still do most of the work, but a facilitator agent decides when to bring a person in.
Ethan and Lilach Mollick name four moments for that. Approval, before an agent spends money, contacts outsiders or touches sensitive material. Expertise, because model ability is uneven and lags specialists in places. Variance, because AI ideas cluster tightly and human ones cover different ground. And interest, because if agents take every engaging decision and leave people only the approvals and the failures, the wrong half of the job has been automated.