Soon we will all have robot butlers, an army of AI agents anticipating our needs and fulfilling our desires. At least, this is the tech promise of the moment. From booking a restaurant to asking your crush on a date, we’ll be able to put our brain in a jar while a bundle of AI systems does our living for us.
Why waste time on wooing when you can leave it to your botservant to turn on the charm? In pursuit of this future, the companies that dominate this market are busy injecting AI agents into the nervous system of the digital world. But as in fairy tales, so in life: relying on magical fixes leads to trouble.
An AI agent is a complex system including AI models, software and cloud infrastructure. For the system to do its thing—summarising your email or spending your money—it needs near-total access to your digital life.
This is not the familiar request for permission to see your contacts; it is akin to giving “root” access to your entire device. Your browser history, credit-card details, private messages and location data are all poised to become AI fodder—heaped in an unsecure pile of undifferentiated data “context”.
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