Agency

It'll do all the work for me.

And it seems like a miracle, but it's really a Faustian bargain because you're giving away your agency and you're atrophying your actual capacity until you will have none.

And you will have to bow down to the AI overlord or the tyrannical government or pick your thing.

So we have to understand that, and that will cause lots of pain and suffering and struggle, but it'll tear us down.

of primordial intelligence, the technician upon which all technology is built or the electricity upon which all technology runs, whatever metaphor, the source.

And as a result of that, with each technology that I adopted or use, you know, mental, emotional, physical, financial, whatever, from that place, I didn't give away my power.

I didn't lose agency.

I grew it.

But what's

so nice with the story that you mentioned is that I think it has human agency.

I feel a lot of the big story that are told, universal basic income, for example, it takes away agency from humans.

And so I think what most people hear is that, A, we're screwed.

And this dual surge is putting human right back at the center of things.

So one thing that I want to drill into this word agency for a second, we talked with Dan Pink about it recently.

You know, he's a great student of human agency.

Do you have thoughts, Bryce, about, because I don't think it's necessarily a given that this moment will result in greater agency.

What would that label be? How would you self-categorize yourself?

I would say I'm deeply curious about the world and the universe and how it works and why it works the way it does, and I'm a big believer in human agency to affect the universe around us, and that's kind of my core kind of driving motivation.

A lot of the other stuff ancillaries about how do you enable that.

[chuckles] And I think that that's sort of probably where I also spend some time is in the enablement of those things.

I, I think the internet has been this incredible enabler of millions of new ways to work, of new ways to earn an income.

And a lot of people will roll their eyes and say, "But that's not what the system was supposed to have set me up for.

The system failed us." Maybe the system did fail you, and maybe the government solution wasn't the right solution, but human agency is what got all these people there.

They all got to this place.

So that literally is the notion, in a way, the matrix is a world in small parts that we're living in when we drive our cars or sit in our cars while they drive us.

And recognizing all of the different ways where we're granting trust to these simulations and to more and more technical interfaces, and potentially losing our ability to have human agency and Yeah, lose human agency in the face of major problems when these systems break down or causes harm.

So yeah, that's what I would call the simulation trap.

Okay.

Okay.

One is a topic that actually comes up a lot in my thinking, and I talk about very rarely, if ever, in public, um, is human agency and control in the sense of, like, control over your own mind.

Like, what does it mean for you to be in control of your own mind and to make choices? Many people, I think, don't really make choices, or they don't really...

Like, in a sense, they are so automatic, they're just res- responding to things how they are, that in a sense they can't really make choices or even consent to things.

But we do have to sort of get, get past.

So that is the ultimate question here that all of this comes down to, which relates to human agency and free will, right? In other words, like, [clears throat] you're turning the engine with the key as opposed to pressing the button.

Uh, is, it's more analogical because you, y- you're doing something physically you feel, and then you hear the engine go on, and then it's like, "I made that happen.

I f-" Whereas you push a button, it doesn't seem quite like the same thing.

You're not even supposed to drive your own cars because that's risk.

But there's a cost in human agency and skill on the other side of that.

And what I love about Crawford is this is often an argument used against technology.

And he says, actually, technology can be a tool for mastery.

Uh, but I have an idea for what I'm, is in my head and, and like it-- to bridge that gap, I think it's super useful.

And to tie this all back to, like, Pat's conversation, it's why human agency is the leadership, uh, human agency is still the thing that matters in all of this.

Totally.

Had a que- One thing I wanted to ask you about, too, with regards to her conversation, like, there's the-- We had talked before about strategic drift and-

Well, I'm glad you brought up both the Ukrainian and the Israeli examples.

I'd like to dip a bit more into the idea of AI and human agency.

So drawing on those types of operations in your book, you state that algorithms now shape intelligence gathering and targeting, but humans are ultimately the final authority.

Where do you see that human authority most at risk of potentially becoming a rubber stamp rather than a legitimate control measure?

Athena speaks to her father, Zeus, and afterwards Zeus intervenes and has Calypso let Odysseus return to his wife.

Human agency is core to the story.

Odysseus makes good and bad decisions, but ultimately it is his agency that causes the ongoing tragedy.

He disregards Athena's warnings.