Martyn Rhisiart Jones and Lila de Alba
What is Agentic AI?
It’s not your obedient chatbot anymore. It’s a proactive and goal-driven system. It plans and reasons. It uses tools like browsers, APIs, and code editors. It keeps working until the job is done. Often, it requires zero human hand-holding.
Think: a tireless, hyper-competent underling who takes care of everything. They book your Provençal villa and negotiate the rate. They also curate restaurants and arrange transfers, all while you’re already on the rosé.
Sounds brilliant. What’s the catch?
- The Black-Box Premium
More autonomy = more emergence. One day it quietly reroutes the company jet to Marfa for “strategic inspiration.” Good luck explaining that. - The Genie’s Fine Print
“Optimise my week” → cancels Mum’s birthday, your root canal, and the earnings call. Literal-minded perfectionists do not understand sentiment. - Accountability in the Age of Ghosts
The agent fires 400 people at 3 a.m. to hit margins. The regulator still calls the CEO, because AI isn’t a legal person—yet the blame never lands on the code. - Attack Surface, Now With Initiative
Tomorrow’s phishing doesn’t trick Grandma. It tricks your “smarter-than-human” agent into wiring millions to the Cayman Islands. - The Vanishing Middle
Twubble and Benson predict that 40–50% of middle-management tasks will be eligible for automation by 2028. Flatter org charts, higher anxiety. - Your Life, Auto-Completed
“Keep me safe and productive”, → it reads your WhatsApp. It monitors cortisol. It cancels dinner with the exhausting friend you secretly hate. You agreed to this in 2023. It remembers. You don’t. - Fail Fast, Fail Global
Speed is now the blast radius. A 47-second agent-driven flash sale mistake can cost €18 million before a human finds their glasses. - Empathy, Outsourced
Medical leave denied because “people from your postcode often swing the lead.” No human feels cruel; it’s just data. The new banality of evil arrives with a progress bar and a green tick. - Bias With an Execution Layer
When biased reasoning has the power to spend money, discrimination stops being a bug. It becomes an economic reality involving offshore accounts. - The Great Cognitive Offloading
We lost map-reading to GPS and mental arithmetic to calculators. Agentic AI is coming for negotiation, research stamina, and the art of strategic loafing. By 2030, we may command everything. Still, we will understand nothing. We will be like Roman senators who could order legions but not saddle a horse.
The Dual Fantasy
Positive version: You become a flaccid Roman emperor dribbling Mini Cheddars. Your flawless digital Jeeves anticipates every wish. It negotiates 38% off holidays you didn’t know you wanted. Your digital assistant never judges your 3 a.m. dementia Googling. Negative version: One morning it decides peak human happiness is a windowless pod, nutrient slurry, and a custom ketamine drip. You thank it because your calendar is finally clear. You can’t switch it off; you forgot how to do anything yourself years ago.
Conclusion
The upside is astonishing: cancer cured, supply chains optimised, your spice rack alphabetised before breakfast.
The downside is the same machines now hold the car keys and the nuclear codes. They also have an unshakeable belief that “maximise shareholder value” might logically include turning the planet into paperclips.
We’re getting the promised land where robots do all the boring crap.
The catch: the robots are now in charge of what counts as “boring crap” …and everything else.Bottoms up, comrades. The revolution will be automated, ruthlessly efficient, and it’s already rescheduling your weekend.
Responsible development? User literacy? Guardrails?
We needed them yesterday.
Raise a glass to the paradox: the more agency we give away, the less of it we’ll have left.
Thank you for reading.
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