He talks about how agents/delegates extend the agency of the people who operate them. And “almost all of society is premised on the fact that agency is scarce”. But software agents grant vastly more agency.
The thing that stops the worst people from annoying the hell out of you is that they lack the agency to do so. But now…
The risk of being punched in the mouth for your word choice dropped to zero, and suddenly all of these opinions were being shouted at anybody that would listen.
I suppose we can automate that sharing better now.
Yeah, the whole rise of the web has had that unfortunate side effect, but no one had treated it like a positive until now. Hell, Meta is showing off how to use their AI to jam up phone lines and bother call centers without having to spend time on the phone!
It’s unfortunate he seems to have gone around the bend, because there is so much that happens in our current unreality that reminds me of Mike Baron’s Nexus comic from the 80s. The “Trade War” storyline has the two competing marketplaces, run by Vooper and the other by a robot named Honest Crocus, get into an audio advertising war so all-consuming it winds up drowning out 911 calls and coming out of the plumbing when you’re in the toilet. Now we finally have the tools, we are going to make that happen along with a million other bad ideas.
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We're dismantling and selling every remaining bit of trust between strangers, hoping to cash out before it's completely gone.
It seems like the only active use case for AI. More of everything! Spam everyone! Drown the world in noise!
I'm just so tired.
AI can be very helpful in lots of ways, but I think it's fair to say that it is most powerful as an enabler for bad actors.
We’ve essentially reduced the cost of being a prick to zero.
There’s some great thinking on this topic from Nicklas Lundblad in this Hannah Fry video on AI Agents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzR5aOElvw
He talks about how agents/delegates extend the agency of the people who operate them. And “almost all of society is premised on the fact that agency is scarce”. But software agents grant vastly more agency.
The thing that stops the worst people from annoying the hell out of you is that they lack the agency to do so. But now…
Wasn’t that was social media?
The risk of being punched in the mouth for your word choice dropped to zero, and suddenly all of these opinions were being shouted at anybody that would listen.
I suppose we can automate that sharing better now.
Yeah, the whole rise of the web has had that unfortunate side effect, but no one had treated it like a positive until now. Hell, Meta is showing off how to use their AI to jam up phone lines and bother call centers without having to spend time on the phone!
It’s unfortunate he seems to have gone around the bend, because there is so much that happens in our current unreality that reminds me of Mike Baron’s Nexus comic from the 80s. The “Trade War” storyline has the two competing marketplaces, run by Vooper and the other by a robot named Honest Crocus, get into an audio advertising war so all-consuming it winds up drowning out 911 calls and coming out of the plumbing when you’re in the toilet. Now we finally have the tools, we are going to make that happen along with a million other bad ideas.
We have a ways to go before we hit zero, since we are inventing entire new ways to be a prick.
I think we are a year or so away from the first tik toks of humanoid robots walking up to people and punching them for views.
Sounds a lot like crypto.
The only long term solution I can see is the old PGP web of trust where people meet in person to exchange their public keys/certs.
America is 'scaling' their low-trust society into the rest of the world and industrial levels