Who knows what combination of reality and sales pitch this really represents, but OpenAI is pushing the idea of AI agents, which I recently mused could be a big thing in 2025.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the technology world by surprise on Thursday with the release of Operator, his company’s first AI agent that can act autonomously on the web…

“This idea of delegating your ‘proof of personhood’ to an agent and letting it act on your behalf is actually super important,” he [not Altman, a different guy talking here] said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Instead of only allowing people you think are human [on your website], you will also allow AI agents that represent a real human…

World’s ID technology could also be used to license AI agents to act on your behalf, Sada said. In a recent blog post, the project notes that its proof of human tools will not only distinguish humans from bots, as they do today, but could help people control a network of AI agents online.

So there you have it. Humans are already interacting with AI agents. But soon, we will be able to authorize AI agents to interact with other AI agents on our behalf. But we will need good AI agents to try to protect us from bad AI agents and bad people doing bad things with AI agents. How will the average person be able to tell if their AI agent is good enough to protect us from AI agents controlled by much richer and powerful people, corporations, and government agencies? For that matter, my mind goes back to Charlie Stross’s Accelerando. I didn’t find it to be a particularly easy or entertaining read, but in that book AIs are able to incorporate themselves, which gives them most of the rights of people, which enables them to legally act in their own interest. Where is all this going to be even a year from now compared to today?

“Evolution, Morpheus. Evolution! Like The Dinosaur. Look Out That Window. You’ve Had Your Time. The Future Is OUR World, Morpheus. The Future Is OUR Time.”

“I’m Agent Johnson. This is Special Agent Johnson. No relation.”