Use this version My Problem with Agents By Jaron Lanier Intelligent agents stink. Agents are those programs that are supposed to get to know you and act autonomously on the Net on your behalf, finding you music you'd like to listen to, for instance. Proponents say agents will make everyone more effective in the hypernetworked world we're entering by giving them a virtual support staff.
Proponents maintain that agents are the next stage in sophistication for interface design.
It's easier for a programmer to say a program is autonomous because then it has the right to be quirky. 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.