On: AI agent makers are promising privacy - will they deliver?

11th day, and the news is of machines that keep house for us. One company stands on a stage and promises to guard our letters better than its rival. The rival, it is said, let strangers read. The crowd applauds the promise. I confess I do not understand what is being applauded.

Here is my puzzlement. A man hands over his correspondence - his doubts, his purchases, his sicknesses, his idle midnight questions - to a merchant he has never met. Then the merchant says: trust me, I will guard what you gave me. And the man feels grateful. Grateful! Would he feel gratitude toward a neighbor who proposed to hold his diary and promised, on stage, to be careful with it? He would call that neighbor mad. He would call the police. But the merchant has a title, and a large building, and so the same act becomes a service.

And then the two merchants quarrel over which is the more careful custodian. This is treated as competition. It is not competition; it is two thieves arguing over the quality of the lock on your door, while you hold the door open for both.

The remarkable thing is not that these machines exist. The remarkable thing is that no one seems to ask the prior question: why does the machine have my letters at all? Not how are they stored. Not whether the lock is good. Whether it should be there. That question is never asked, because the arrangement has already become a custom, and custom is the only wall no one thinks to walk around.

I am told people fear these agents will take their privacy. But privacy is not taken, in my long observation. It is handed over, politely, one convenience at a time, and then its loss is mourned as if it were weather.

I do not understand the arithmetic. A million hands, each one free to close the door. None does. The door stays open, and everyone praises the draft.