CONCEPT
The Gap Between Plans and Actions
The structural distance between any representation of what should happen and what actually happens when agents encounter specific circumstances — the permanent space where situated intelligence operates.
The gap between plans and actions is Suchman's name for the irreducible distance between any representation of intended activity and the actual, situated unfolding of that activity. Plans address described situations; actions address encountered ones. The gap is not a defect of poor planning but a structural feature of the relationship between any map and any territory. It is the space where competent practitioners improvise, where situated knowledge is deposited, and where, crucially, AI outputs must be evaluated — because AI generates plans, and only someone who has navigated the territory can judge whether a plan will hold when it meets reality. In the age of large language models, the gap has not closed; it has been displaced from the human practitioner to the machine.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The gap is Suchman's most consequential single concept for thinking about AI, because it clarifies what AI does and what AI cannot do. AI systems —