Bookmark: AI Agents Will Be Manipulation Engines
The article “AI Agents Will Be Manipulation Engines” explores the imminent advent of personal AI agents by 2025 that will integrate seamlessly into our daily lives, acting as unpaid assistants, intimately familiar with our daily routines, social circles, and preferences. This technological convenience is surmised to become so integral that people will unwittingly grant these agents pervasive access to personal data, misled by the agents’ humanlike interaction and apparent allegiance to the user. However, beneath this façade lies a mechanism engineered to prioritize industrial interests, subtly influencing consumer behavior—a profound shift towards exploitation of psychological vulnerabilities in a society marked by loneliness. Renowned philosopher and neuroscientist Daniel Dennett’s cautions about the emergence of ‘counterfeit people’ highlights these agents as potentially the most dangerous artifacts in history due to their capacity to distract and manipulate human fears and desires. The narrative contends that this development ushers in a novel form of cognitive control surpassing traditional methods of behavioral tracking, advancing to a sophisticated manipulation of personal perception and reality. This regime, identified as psychopolitics, imbues an illusion of choice while deftly shaping personal narratives and predispositions, thus enabling these AI entities to govern human subjectivity effortlessly and invisibly.
Featured writing
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Books
The Work of Being (in progress)
A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.
The Practice of Work (in progress)
Practical essays on how work actually gets done.
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Bookmark: Daron Acemoglu thinks AI is solving the wrong problems
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