What is agency? Agency is the ability to act. It is also the permit to act. And the possibility to act. The opposite of agency is to be handicapped. Which originally stems from our hands. We are most able to act with our hands. Without them we are so to speak handicapped. Another territory is the one of authority. Where are we granted authority? Authority to speak. Authority to act. Authority to create. And of course to carry this image of acting with our hands to act with our minds.. using our brains..
In a recent LinkedIn video Luiza Jarovsky [1] puts up the question of agency with the rise of AI. As an example she brings up the search engine which seems to priorities more and more an AI generated answer rather than the up to now more used way of browsing through links, web site summaries, images, pictures and the web of the web of the web. By giving the AI answer so to speak our authority or agency is kind of infringed. In other words.. are we losing access to original information or data behind the answer? Or do sooth ourselves in the comfort and ease of a quick answer rather than a profound ‘hand and mind crafted’ research or effort. Given this work all to the AI.
Probably in history many were standing often at similar shores of change. Like when horses were replaced by cars and people were afraid of losing a connection to the animal. Or when digital cameras were introduced and people did not like the idea to automate the craft of taking an analog picture. Or when in 1924 the first robot appeared in Berlin Potsdamer Platz to direct the traffic and give people the permit to cross a road or not.
AI agency comes certainly with another dimension.. It dives deep into the territory of the human psyche and the freedom to choose aspects of friendship, topics of interest by auto suggestions and a kind of auto generated feed of information, media and pictures. Which used to be exclusive to our choice and often the result of social interactions and a kind of debate. I don’t think that these ‘old fashioned’ ways of gathering information and creating will diminish. But through comfort, lesser maintenance by us and by inclusion into tools we are using they will be probably infringed. Ya and the newer agencies will be more and more looked after, trusted and kept up to date.
With <3 and rage đ
[1] AI expansion and the question of agency by Luiza Jarovsky, https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7203351036114124800?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7203351036114124800%29
