Supporters say that traditional concerns about user interface will be less important because agents will be smart enough to figure out what we want them to do. This is where I really get scared. I am concerned that people will gradually, and perhaps not even consciously, adjust their lives to make agents appear to be smart. If an agent seems smart, it might really mean that people have dumbed themselves down to make their lives more easily representable by their agents' simple database design. This is a serious problem because it could sneak up on us.
People are so much more flexible than computers and so prone to suggestion.
Novices already tend to defer to computers, blaming themselves when a computer is hard to use. Agents would present users with a path of least resistance, reflecting the life pattern and category typology built into the agent's database. Many of us are already leading lives designed to be favorably assessed by the crude databases that calculate our credit ratings. Imagine if our tastes in literature, surgeons, and blind dates were influenced in the same way. Both Nicholas Negroponte and Pattie Maes have made the argument that agents will serve as a social equalizer, giving the disadvantaged access to the tools and staff formerly available only to the rich.