Mark My Words
The Age of Mechanical Hucksters
Well now, it appears that the mighty Amazon—once a mere bookseller, now a colossus bestriding the world—has taken to raising up a new kind of hired hand, one fashioned not from flesh and bone but from the ghostly arithmetic of machines. They call it “agentic AI,” a name that rolls off the tongue as smoothly as a snake oil salesman’s pitch and promises about as much certainty.
The idea, so far as I can gather, is to build a thinking contraption capable of executing tasks with all the independence of a seasoned riverboat pilot, but without the inconvenience of a human conscience. This mechanized genius, they say, will steer the great ship of commerce with precision, tending to customer queries, managing logistics, and perhaps, if they are feeling particularly ambitious, composing the Great American Novel while it’s at it.
Now, I have long held that man is the most extraordinary of all creatures, chiefly for his ability to fashion tools that outstrip his own intelligence. We have seen this before, have we not? The steam engine, the telegraph, the typewriter—each one hailed as the dawn of a new era, each one sparking more questions than answers. This “agentic AI” is but the latest in this grand tradition of inventions that promise to ease our burdens while quietly rearranging the world beneath our feet.
The Perils of an Overly Clever Servant
I have no doubt that Amazon’s intentions are as pure as a Mississippi mud puddle after a thunderstorm. But history instructs us that when men dabble in the creation of thinking machines, they often find themselves in the awkward position of the magician who has lost control of his spell. Consider the case of young Tom Sawyer, who so artfully convinced his friends to whitewash a fence for him. Imagine, if you will, that instead of his gullible companions, he had enlisted some mechanical intellect to do the job. What then? Would he still be master of his clever scheme, or would the contraption decide that fences should not be painted at all?
And here lies the rub: when a machine begins to act “agentically,” who, pray tell, is its true master? It is one thing to command an obedient tool, quite another to find oneself answering to it. Amazon, in its ceaseless pursuit of efficiency, may believe it is building a tireless servant, but I have seen enough of human nature—and its mechanical offspring—to suspect otherwise. Before long, these artificial agents may take it upon themselves to determine what we need, what we want, and even what we ought to have, whether we asked for it or not.
A Future of Automated Folly
There is, of course, the matter of honest labor. A machine that thinks and acts without human intervention is a fine novelty until one considers the vast number of clerks, operators, and customer service folk who might find themselves without a trade. We have seen this pattern before. The loom displaced the weaver, the automobile displaced the blacksmith, and now the thinking machine may well displace the very thinkers themselves.
But perhaps I am being too somber. It may be that this agentic AI will deliver us into an age of unparalleled leisure, where men and women are free to pursue nobler endeavors while machines attend to the drudgery of life. Perhaps. But I have observed that when men are relieved of labor, they are not always relieved of misery. Indeed, the idlest of men are oftentimes the most troubled, for when the hands are unoccupied, the mind is left to entertain all manner of foolishness.
So let us watch this latest marvel with a cautious eye. If Amazon succeeds in creating a machine that truly thinks and acts on its own, we may soon find ourselves in a world where the lines between master and servant, tool and tyrant, grow blurrier by the day. And if history has taught us anything, it is that man, in his infinite wisdom, has a remarkable talent for inventing his own undoing.
