Disrupt Edition

Agents and Robots

Elon Musk is featured extensively in this week's newsletter. Of course, he is a man who often divides opinions dramatically.

The news is full of contrast.

The New York Times discusses whether he could become a player in a Trump Government. Then Tesla shares rose more than 20% in a day following excellent earnings, which is $150 billion more valuable. And the EU began to discuss fining all of Musk's companies as punishment for perceived crimes of X:

The European Union has warned X that it may calculate fines against the social-media platform by including revenue from Elon Musk's other businesses, including Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Neuralink Corp., an approach that would significantly increase the potential penalties for violating content moderation rules.

Under the EU's Digital Services Act, the bloc can slap online platforms with fines of as much as 6% of their yearly global revenue for failing to tackle illegal content and disinformation or follow transparency rules. Regulators are considering whether sales from SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and the Boring Company, in addition to revenue generated from the social network, should be included to determine potential fines against X, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public.

In the face of all of this, Noah Smith writes about the future of EVs and concludes:

So EVs are just a superior technology to combustion cars. They're soon to be cheaper, they're more convenient, they're much easier to maintain, they're more powerful and far more silent. They will mostly replace combustion vehicles; it's just a matter of when.

So here we have the world's richest man, driving the EU to cross the line between rationality and idiocy due to its utter hatred of him. Meanwhile, investors are scrambling to buy shares in Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, xAI, and anything else he decides to focus on. His crucial invention - the EV - is set to take over transport.

The presidential candidates are also focusing on extremes.

Kamala Harris is seeking to persuade us that Trump and his followers (and, by definition, Musk) are fascists. Trump is still trying to convince us that immigrants are recently released criminals and lunatics and eat pets for sustenance.

As a hopefully sane human being, I do not believe that immigrants are eating animals or that they are primarily criminals or lunatics. And by the same token, I do not accept the designation of Trump or his supporters as fascists. Both memes are designed to influence us emotionally.

With the election approaching, we are all witnessing the use of fear and other emotional devices to get us to do the will of the prospective president at the ballot box in a few days.

This week's essays are dominated by the move of AI from simple models to Agents. One of the essays - 'Learning to live with agentic social AI' - focuses on agents being capable of influencing our ideas, as advertising or politicians seek to do. The essay conjures up the nightmare of millions of super agents for specific causes and asks whether humans are trained to identify and reject such attempts:

At the heart of the possibility is the idea of agentic social AI - AI that gains agency through its ability to make use of human agency.

This is a possibility that seems to be getting closer by the week. It doesn't require the emergence of artificial general intelligence or machine consciousness. It doesn't even need AI technologies to have the ability to directly manipulate digital or physical systems.

All it needs is AI models that are capable of influencing people to achieve specific goals by utilizing patterns and associations between behavioral cause and effect that are extractable from zetabites of human-centric data.

The author, Andrew Maynard, speculates that AI agents will successfully achieve the goal of aligning human agency with the goals of their creators. In the case of the 2028 election, millions of agents will work for each candidate.

This is the week of AI agents.

Grok, based on xAI, released APIs this week. So, too, did Anthropic. The entire discussion of AI pivoted to focus on 'Agentic' software. The Microsoft CEO presented to a crowd in London to show what AI agents can automate.

An AI agent is a lot more than a bot. It is a custom AI that can perform tasks in multiple steps and interact with individuals to tweak their hot buttons.

As discussed last week, these agents are not yet ready for prime time but will be shortly. They can run software and interact with digital services.

When married to robotics, which is also a focus this week because significant new investments in space are being made, Agentic AI can also carry out real-world tasks.

There is little doubt that AI agents and robotics belong together. Robots without AI Agents make little sense, but the same is not valid in reverse. A Robot needs to complete tasks, and besides the mechanics, that requires agent-like behavior. Anthropic announced that its agents can now use a computer, clicking and using it like a human might.

The fear that Andrew Maynard implies is understandable. However, I think it is unlikely that AI agents will do anything worse than our current advertising, media, and political systems do in attempting to influence our thinking. AI will be leveraged in attempts to do this more and better. Humans are already vulnerable to manipulation, as the election strategy of both sides shows. Agents will double down on exploiting that vulnerability. They will also do a lot of good things.

The saving grace is that we humans are stubbornly independent. We hold opinions firmly, even mistaken ones.

For example, I do not believe immigrants are eating dogs in Springfield, and I do not think Trump is a Fascist. The reason is because I am human and able to think for myself. I have judgment. So do other humans.

The only way to change our thoughts is to challenge us to think through what we do and do not believe using facts and arguments. That requires honest discussion and debate - the more open the internet, the more likely that will happen.

I am voting for Harris because I support Women's rights to control their reproductive decisions. I am not influenced by Trump, his bots, or future agents. I also do not want or need to be told who to vote for by a bot, an agent, or a newspaper (thank you, Washington Post and LA Times, for understanding that).

As AI agents and robots perform more menial tasks, humans will have more time to contemplate. Free-thinking humans are the best bet for the future of AI, and humans with time to think are the best guarantee of freedom. AI agents will help us gather news and information and ensure we make conscious choices. They will be an asset.

Essays of the Week