In 2025, it will be commonplace to talk with a personal AI agent that knows your schedule, your circle of friends, the places you go. This will be sold as a convenience equivalent to having a personal, unpaid assistant. These anthropomorphic agents are designed to support and charm us so that we fold them into every part of our lives, giving them deep access to our thoughts and actions. With voice-enabled interaction, that intimacy will feel even closer. That sense of comfort comes from an illusion that we are engaging with something truly humanlike, an agent that is on our side. Of course, this appearance hides a very different kind of system at work, one that serves industrial priorities that are not always in line with our own. New AI agents will have far greater power to subtly direct what we buy, where we go, and what we read. That is an extraordinary amount of power. AI agents are designed to make us forget their true allegiance as they whisper to us in humanlike tones. These...
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