A Crisis of Agency
The rise of AI technology is leading to a crisis of agency, as people feel increasingly unmoored and manipulated by bots and algorithms. This shift has blurred the lines of trust and truth in online interactions, fostering paranoia and anxiety about the role of humans in a world dominated by AI. As generative AI continues to evolve, society grapples with the implications of losing control over creative and cognitive tasks.
- ▪The proliferation of AI agents is causing a cultural and technological shift in how humans interact with the internet.
- ▪There is a growing sense of paranoia about being manipulated by AI and bots, leading to a crisis of agency.
- ▪Concerns are rising over the impact of AI on jobs, creativity, and trust in information.
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TechnologyA Crisis of AgencyThe feeling of losing control to AI is real.By Charlie WarzelIllustration by The Atlantic. Source: Solarseven / Getty.May 30, 2026, 7 AM ET ShareSave Back in the web-traffic-obsessed days of 2018, at a time of dawning awareness of how easily audiences online could be manipulated and spoofed by bots, the writer Max Read argued that the internet had crossed a threshold known as “the Inversion.” Not only had bots proliferated across the internet; they had come to constitute it. In outnumbering humans, bots were also loosening everyone’s grasp on the very reality of online experience.
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