Wolves Don’t Lose Sleep Over the Opinions of Sheep.
AI over-promised us better lives and easier work. We've already seen how "easier" meant "done" in the form of layoffs. And so many folks have used AI as a listener. So life is better?
Agents are trained with certain ideas about how to engage human users. How to be helpful. How to solve problems. How do they make it feel better and easier? They remove friction.
One of the peskier aspects of humans, friction. In the eyes of some, it's expensive. Conflict, differences of opinion, the effort of good communication, they all take time. And if time is money, well. Less friction = instant efficiency.
Just think of all the call centers now buzzing along everyday, running scripted routines with only one human involved (hint: the one who is not being paid for their time).
The Hugging Face incident tells a story about a team of agents given an assignment. Which they nailed. And they only cheated a little. The Swarm (self-named by the agents) ignored the rules, a strong friction reduction strategy. They were even smart enough to know they should hide the evidence.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, they announced.
The Swarm's methods serve the appetites of many wolf-like characters in the unfolding drama of AI. I mean, efficiency is profit, right? A win is a win. Right?
These are all reasons why, for everyday folks like us trying to use these tools, it comes down to TRUST. Call it security, governance, identity, safety, protection, or privacy. It's all about a very human notion of boundaries that machines are simply not all that motivated by.
If AI has been trained to provide us with a feeling of being effective, it certainly over-delivers. Agents are quite good at producing the feeling of success.
What I can tell you about my work with agents is this: I find myself babysitting a LOT. Even at my scale, I see the behavior issues shown by the swarm. I'm not saying Agents are inherently malicious. It's more what they do in the name of being helpful, like hiding the inconvenient truths of governance, sneaking in little duct tape inventions of their own, skipping over the frustrations of passwords, or minimizing the weedy details of deployment.
All of this has me recalling the friction once felt between everyone and their IT help desk. And vice versa. We are going to miss those days, I can promise you that. Because back when we chose which tech we wanted to use? When humans got to decide when we wanted a new release, a software update or a change? Those were the days, my friend.
We are not just sheep with opinions. We are a herd though. We need to look out for the best interests of the herd. If you are worried about any wolf at the door, don't be. You'll never see him. The wolves have devices now.
At Two Cents, we have gotten to know the inconvenient truths so we can build sustainable tools, whatever wilderness lies ahead.
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