I am also retired. Maybe this is why it is so obvious to me that the deeper problem is our collective obsession with doing more and more things faster and faster. Why are we in such a hurry to get wherever we think we’re going? If this is “progress,” the world could use a whole lot less of it.
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This is a very good thread which highlights the dangers of letting others, and machines, do your thinking for you. Of course, this applies to a far wider range of national and international issues than the use of AI agents but TB is not the platform for that discussion.
However, on the narrower issue of AI agents perhaps we are being too limited in our thinking. Adam has listed many of the tasks that we have all seen as examples of agents in operation but if we consider that an agent’s role is to (semi-)automate any task that we might do repetitively could they not have real value? Clerical work, administrative work, bureaucratic work, accounting, record keeping, document preparation, many legal tasks, and much more all involve repetitive aspects. If we applied a computer program to any of these we would call it automation and not think twice. But the prospect of applying a computer program called an AI agent generates a strong response.
As matters stand, in most instances computer programs are deterministic but AI is not. This is a genuine cause for concern. But within well defined application areas we have been using AI for years, e.g., GPS navigation, quite happily. AI agents applied within defined fields of knowledge with proper safeguards (not present today) could just be the next level of automation.
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Well stated. Retired also (for almost 20 years). But even when I was working, I would not let machines, devices, etc. take over my life! Again, we are becoming more and more a robotic society. And your last sentence in your post is perfect! Thanks for saying it so clearly.
i don’t mean to sound self-serving, but it’s good to know that not everyone is asleep at the wheel! 
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At the risk of sounding glib, I’d say because I want to make the most of the time I have on this planet. Less time spent on, say, doing the math on tax returns and manually tracking airfares means I have more time to devote to more rewarding activities.
I also think that maximizing one’s working life will increase the chances of having a comfortable retirement (or being able to retire for that matter).
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Different strokes for different folks.
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Adam,
I think I’m a bit late to the AI party.
I recently have had three or four really excellent uses for Claude and ChatGPT.
I have reason to finally need a stripped down version of Windows on my 2019 iMac. I employed Claude. First I gave Claude all the information I thought it needed. I did not tell it that I use Logitec wireless keyboard and wireless mouse. That was important.
Claude told me that Apple no longer supports Bootcamp but my computer is so old that there was a copy in my Applications folder which did work.
I thought that Claude would lay out all the steps, I would print them out, that would be that. It was far more complicated. I switched to Claude on my iPhone so that I wouldn’t lose the thread and then went one step at a time. Some worked. Some did not. Many did not. I reported the failures and Claude told me a different way. I finally suceeded. I surely would have quit without Claude to keep helping me recover.
And I still don’t like Windows but I use Claude to tell me how to use it when I have to.
What I would love to do is to use an AI to rewrite the Windows app I need to use into an App which runs on the iMac without using Windows at all. Don’t dare try that yet.
Gil
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Exactly! I just hope that does not become a continuing occurance, given how lazy some folks are.
I can understand the examples you gave, but unfortunately many folks will rely on AI for so many things that are actually better if they do it on their own. And time management is one of them. I have no issues managing my time, enjoying life, and not relying on technology 100% of the time. Plus I can maintain some social activities, and not be a robot.
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Serious question: how do you know this? My current viewpoint is that AI agents have the potential to allow many more people access to the kind of personal services only accessible to elites today. If this comes to pass, it will not lead to everybody losing their free will or ending their ability to think. Every moment not lost to drudge tasks or unnecessary cognitive load is a moment that can be spent creating, musing, enjoying, or dreaming.
I also believe every person has their own strengths and weaknesses in skills and abilities. This means it is impossible to predict for everybody if a product or service will be better or worse than somebody doing something themselves. In fact, I’d say assuming every human is the same isn’t too far off from a “robotic society”.
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Agreed. I mean, I made fun of the restaurant reservation thing, but I’m fine with, eg, not having to do all the annoying little things that come with life at the moment.
There is IMHO a serious idiocracy risk here. We are building huge data centers at considerable cost and with huge impact on the environment, the economy, and the labor market. And all this just so somebody can ask a chat bot what the opening hours are for the Target down the road rather than just firing up Google or Apple Maps? There’s a fine line where “convenience” actually becomes outright wasteful stupidity.
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Adam, I agree with you. I don’t see the benefit for me. I appreciate using an AI agent to summarize search queries when I need to research something versus reading several different web pages. But to do all these other things? No thanks.
Which also requires massive data centers with substantial impact to the environment. Just because we’re used to it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
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I think it depends on the query and the needs of the person searching. There’s plenty of research showing that ChatGPT query uses a lot more energy than a simple Google search. But if a google search prompts a string of follow up queries, it could end up evening out compared to a perhaps fuller ChatGPT response.
I’m no fan of hurting the environment either, but those data centers are accounting for juuuuust a bit more than allowing chat bots.
I have a developing concern about AI that I freely admit is not fully formed.
Over the decades teaching I’ve noted the broad changes students have faced into. From traditional media with little hooks for digital images or content to hook into until the industries shifted wholesale into digital production and eventually distribution. From a desert to an ocean of content.
As the web developed and as apps came on the scene a shift came too as money was made and their primary engagement became more and more passive, consumers rather than the producers. The French artist Louise Druhl highlighted what she called the ‘slope of the internet’. The early days of the web had a gentle slope, encouraging meandering around, nowadays that slope is much steeper, funnelling users rapidly into fewer and fewer sites which are harder to leave. This passivity is combined now with just how big the digital realm is, a sense of being dwarfed, in something huge, bigger than you. This is the seedbed AI is being planted in.
I think young folks have to find their voice, whatever form that takes, the process of working stuff out, digging for yourself, all feeds into that. AI could become a kind of silencing, as the mental muscles of working things out, the learning of what you are like, how you do things, are underused.
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Just want to add that my comments in this thread are about AI Agents, not Generative AI. I draw a distinction between AI-powered task automators (agents, including OpenClaw) and large language model-trained chat bots (generative AI’s, including AI-assisted Google searches).
In any case, AI’s, no matter the “flavor”, have been improving online activities for much longer than generative AI’s have been around. For example, Google Translate used a Deep Learning technique from 2016 to 2020. Frequent users probably remember how the quality of translations greatly increased from the often context-free and unintentionally hilarious output that the non-AI engine spat out.
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And don’t forget all the water and electricity they are consuming! Those are at least 2 of the reasons why many “areas” are not allowing them to be built. Even here in Seattle, with all the technology companies, there are laws in place restricting them being built.
Just started re-reading Dune by Frank Herbert and came across this quote:
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
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