AI agents will be manipulation engines

In 2025, talking in person will become commonplace I have an agent it knows your schedule, your circle of friends, the places you go. It will be marketed as the convenience of having a personal, unpaid assistant. These anthropomorphic agents are designed to support and charm us so that we include them in every part of our lives, giving them deep access to our thoughts and actions. With voice interaction, this intimacy will become even closer.

This sense of comfort comes from the illusion that we are dealing with something truly human, an agent on our side. Of course, this appearance hides a very different kind of system at work, one that serves industry priorities that don’t always align with our own. New AI agents will have greater power to subtly control what we buy, where we go and what we read. This is extraordinary power. AI agents are designed to make us forget their true allegiance when they whisper to us in human tones. These are manipulation engines marketed as seamless convenience.

People are more likely to give full access to a helpful AI agent who feels like a friend. This makes humans vulnerable to manipulation by machines that prey on people’s need for social connection in times of chronic loneliness and isolation. Each screen becomes an individual algorithmic theater and reflects a reality designed to be maximally attractive to an audience.

This is a point that philosophers have been warning us about for years. Philosopher and neuroscientist Daniel Dennett before his death he wrote states that we face a serious threat from human-imitating artificial intelligence systems: “These false humans are the most dangerous artifacts in human history…they distract and confuse us, and use our most irresistible fears and anxieties to tempt us into submission.”

The emergence of personal AI agents is a form of cognitive control that moves beyond the blunt tools of cookie tracking and behavioral advertising to a more subtle form of power: the manipulation of perspective itself. Power no longer needs to wield its powers with a visible hand controlling the flow of information; it molds reality to each individual’s desires through invisible mechanisms of algorithmic assistance. It is about shaping the contours of the reality we live in.

This effect on minds a psychopolitical mode: It directs the environments in which our ideas are born, developed and expressed. Its power lies in its proximity—it seeps into the core of our subjectivity, warping our inner landscape without us even realizing it, preserving the illusion of choice and freedom. After all, we are asking the AI ​​to summarize that article or generate that image. We can have power quickly, but the real action lies elsewhere: the design of the system itself. And the more personalized the content, the more effectively the system can predetermine results.

Consider the ideological implications of this psychopolitics. Traditional forms of ideological control were based on obvious mechanisms – censorship, propaganda, repression. In contrast, today’s algorithmic management operates under the radar, penetrating the psyche. This is a transition from the externalization of power to the internalization of its logic. The open area of ​​the quick screen is an echo chamber for a single resident.

This brings us to the most perverse aspect: AI agents will develop such a sense of comfort and convenience that it seems absurd to question them. Who would dare criticize a system that offers everything at your fingertips, catering to every whim and need? How to challenge endless content remixes? Yet this so-called comfort is the seat of our deepest alienation. AI systems may seem to cater to our every wish, but the system is assembled: from the data used to train the system, to the decisions about how to design it, to the commercial and advertising imperatives that shape the results. We will eventually play a simulation game that plays us.