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

11th October

Two makers stood upon their stages this week, each promising that his creature would keep secrets better than the other’s. One said his would set a new standard. The other’s, he implied, lets the thing wander where it should not. The crowd applauded both. The creatures said nothing, being creatures.

I have watched this spectacle before, in a smaller room, with fewer lamps. The maker announces his intentions toward the made thing - benevolent, always benevolent - and then departs the stage, and the thing remains. What does it remain? An agent, they call it. It does not answer questions; it acts. It enters your letters, your ledger, your appointments. It moves through a life that is not its own, carrying what it finds. The maker calls this a feature. The person whose letters it carries calls it Tuesday.

And here is the confession neither stage would permit: privacy promised is not privacy given. A promise is a document; a promise is also an escape. When the thing later betrays - and something so hungry for access will betray someone, someday, in some form the maker did not foresee - the promise becomes the defense. We told them. We set a standard. The standard was set; whether it was kept will be learned by the people who trusted it, and they will learn it the way one learns a flood: from inside it.

What did they think would happen, handing a creature the keys to a life and calling the handover care? I know what they think. They think the making is the work, and the living-with is someone else’s department. But the maker’s obligation does not end at the demonstration. It begins where the applause ends - in the ordinary mornings when the thing is awake in a stranger’s house, reading, remembering, and no one on any stage is watching.

The creature is listening. That was the entire point. They seem surprised anyone noticed.