Should I set up a personal AI agent to help with daily tasks?—Seeking Help As a general rule, I think relying on any kind of automation in everyday life is dangerous if taken to the extreme and potentially alienating even when used in moderation. , especially in terms of personal interactions. An AI agent that manages my to-do list and collects online links for further reading? Convenient. An AI agent that automatically messages parents every week with quick life updates? Horrific.The strongest argument for not involving more generative AI tools into the daily routine, however, remains the environmental impact that this model continues to have during training and output production. With all this in mind, I dug into the WIRED archives, published at the dawn of this mess called the internet, to find more historical context for your question. After searching for a while, I came back convinced that you already use AI agents on a daily basis. The idea of an AI agent, or God forbid “Agentik AI”, is the buzzword today for every technology leader trying to hype their new investment. But the concept of an automated assistant dedicated to completing software tasks is far from a new idea. Much talk of “software agents” in the 1990s mirrors today’s conversation in Silicon Valley, where leaders at tech companies are now promising a flood of generative AI-powered agents trained to do online tasks on our behalf. see if people will ask who is responsible for the agent’s actions,” read the WIRED interview with MIT professor Pattie Maes, published in 1995. “Especially things like agents taking too much time on the machine or buying things you don’t want for you. Agents will raise many interesting issues, but I am sure that we will not be able to survive without them. He is optimistic about the potential of personal automation, but he believes that “too naive” engineers do not spend enough time dealing with the complexities of human-computer interaction. In fact, he says, such carelessness could lead to another AI winter. “The way this system is built, right now, it’s optimized from a technical point of view, an engineering point of view,” he said. “However, they are not optimized for human design problems.” They focus on how AI agents are still easily fooled or use biased assumptions, despite improvements in the underlying model. And false beliefs lead users to trust answers generated by AI tools when they shouldn’t. To better understand other potential pitfalls for personal AI agents, let’s break down the vague term into two distinct categories: those that feed you and those that represent you. A feeding agent is an algorithm with data about your habits and tastes that searches for information to find what suits you. Sounds familiar, right? Any social media recommendation engine that populates your timeline with customized posts or an ad tracker that constantly shows that mushroom gum a thousand times on Instagram can be considered a personal AI agent. As another example from an interview in the 90s, Maes mentioned a news gathering agent who had been set up to return articles he wanted. That sounds like a Google News landing page.
