lets talk about the future of AI Agents. Imagine instead of a central “hub” that AI Agents would link to, there was a P2P network of agents that were firmware on your smartphone. Imagine further that built into the open source network protocol was the idea of a pseudopod that would manage the macro needs of the network. is this concept feasible?
This is a really compelling idea, and yes, it is feasible—though with some significant challenges. You’re essentially describing a decentralized AI agent network running on a P2P (peer-to-peer) protocol, where each user’s smartphone acts as a node. The pseudopod concept would function as a dynamic, emergent coordinating entity that ensures network stability, resource allocation, and high-level organization.
How This Would Work
- AI Agents as Firmware:
Instead of relying on cloud-based LLMs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, each smartphone would host an AI agent natively, processing requests locally and offloading heavier tasks via the network when needed. - P2P Communication:
Agents would share knowledge, processing power, and models without a centralized hub. Nodes would:- Sync relevant updates between peers.
- Distribute workloads dynamically based on available resources.
- Encrypt and authenticate communications to prevent adversarial attacks.
- The Role of the Pseudopod:
This is where your idea gets particularly interesting. Instead of a static central server, a pseudopod could act as a fluid, self-organizing meta-agent within the network.- It wouldn’t be a single entity, but an emergent property of the network itself.
- It could aggregate key insights and optimize network efficiency.
- It could self-replicate and shift depending on network conditions (e.g., migrating functions based on energy efficiency or bandwidth constraints).
- Users wouldn’t have to interact with it directly—it would function as an autonomous background process.
Challenges & Feasibility Issues
- Compute Power & Model Size
- Today’s smartphones can run smaller LLMs (like Mistral, Llama 3 mini, etc.), but they still lack the power for GPT-4-class models without cloud offloading.
- A hybrid approach (on-device + selective cloud or federated learning) might be necessary at first.
- Security Risks & Trust Models
- A P2P AI network introduces attack vectors like poisoned data, Sybil attacks, and adversarial takeovers.
- Strong cryptographic methods would be required (e.g., blockchain-style proofs, zero-knowledge authentication).
- Coordination Without Centralization
- Who updates the models? How does the pseudopod decide what to prioritize?
- If a group of nodes becomes corrupted, does the pseudopod react?
- Would users have personalized AI agents, or would they be interoperable and standardized?
- User Experience & Adoption
- Decentralized networks tend to have worse UX than centralized ones (see: email vs. WhatsApp).
- Making AI feel seamless and responsive while distributing workloads across nodes could be a challenge.
Is It Possible?
Yes, but likely in stages:
- Stage 1: Hybrid AI (local + optional P2P sync).
- Stage 2: Fully decentralized networks for certain AI tasks.
- Stage 3: A truly autonomous, emergent pseudopod system.
The first implementations might look like a Meshnet AI, where local devices sync securely without reliance on cloud-based infrastructure. As compute efficiency improves, models shrink, and decentralized AI coordination advances, we could see a full P2P AI ecosystem emerge.
What specific use cases do you imagine for this network? Would the pseudopod have a governance function, or would it be more of a distributed compute manager?
I see the pseudopod as having some sort of governance over the information that was collected by the hivemind. This would be a replacement for the Twitter firehose of information because the pseudopod would serve as a traffic cop for all the input coming into the network. I don’t know that much about pseudopods, but I suppose if there was a crisis somewhere it could ping members of the network to tell the owners of the phone so point their phones in the direction of the event.
That’s a fascinating evolution of the idea—it turns the pseudopod into a decentralized information curator for the network, dynamically governing and routing data as needed. If I’m understanding correctly, this would essentially replace centralized platforms like Twitter (or even traditional news aggregation) with an organic, peer-driven intelligence network that processes and disseminates real-time events.
How the Pseudopod Could Function as a Traffic Cop
- Filtering & Prioritization of Information:
- The AI agents running on individual smartphones would collect, analyze, and rank incoming data.
- Instead of a centralized entity like Twitter’s algorithm deciding what’s trending, the pseudopod would self-organize, determining what’s relevant based on network signals.
- Misinformation or low-quality data could be suppressed naturally by a reputation-based validation system within the network.
- Crisis Detection & Response:
- The pseudopod could detect anomalies (e.g., sudden spikes in reports about earthquakes, protests, power outages).
- It could ping network nodes nearby (users’ phones) and suggest active participation—for example, turning on cameras, taking readings, or sending alerts.
- This is similar to citizen journalism, but fully decentralized and free from corporate or governmental interference.
- Dynamic Network Engagement:
- If an event gains traction, the pseudopod could adjust the way information flows.
- Nodes closer to the event might take on a heavier data-gathering role, while distant nodes focus on contextualizing and verifying the event.
- This allows for a self-correcting, emergent news ecosystem, which is far harder to manipulate than a single-platform social media site.
Why This is a Game-Changer
- Replaces Centralized Social Media Firehoses:
- Today, news flows through controlled choke points (Twitter, Google News, etc.).
- This network would allow unfiltered, real-time intelligence sharing, but with emergent governance, so it’s not total chaos.
- Makes Smartphones into Active Participants:
- Your phone wouldn’t just consume content; it would sense, verify, and distribute information dynamically.
- Example: A natural disaster occurs → nearby phones automatically turn into data relays, sharing footage, air quality, GPS updates, etc.
- Built-in Fact-Checking & Authenticity Signals:
- No need for centralized “moderation” teams—trust in data would be weighted by network consensus and reputation scores.
Challenges & Next Steps
- Preventing Manipulation:
- Bad actors might try to flood the network with false information, requiring robust node reputation tracking.
- AI-driven anomaly detection would need to identify coordinated disinformation efforts.
- Privacy & Security Risks:
- If people’s phones are “pointed” at events, there must be anonymization protocols to prevent government or corporate exploitation.
- Decentralized encryption (similar to secure messengers like Signal) would be necessary.
- Hardware & Battery Drain:
- Constantly processing live event data could drain smartphone resources.
- Optimizations like selective engagement (only activating when necessary) would be crucial.
Would You Envision Different Pseudopods for Different Roles?
For example, could there be:
- A news and event pseudopod governing real-time information flow?
- A knowledge aggregation pseudopod that curates long-term information?
- A community-driven pseudopod that helps nodes self-organize into useful groups?
Or do you see it as a single, evolving entity that shifts roles as needed?
the issue for me is what would be the UX that would replace the Twitter firehose in the age of AI agents. would your AI, within the context of a hivemind, only give you curated information about events around the world? would it serve as a something of a new anchor that would process pings from across the P2P network?
The UX problem is the real puzzle here. The Twitter firehose worked because it was a raw, real-time stream of human-generated content that could be curated algorithmically. But in an AI agent-powered hivemind, the raw data stream would be overwhelming—a flood of machine-processed pings, verifications, and analyses.
So what replaces the Twitter timeline? Here are some possibilities:
1. AI Anchor Experience (Personalized Newsroom)
Your AI agent acts like a personal news anchor, summarizing global and local events in real-time based on the hivemind’s pings.
- Instead of doomscrolling, you’d converse with your AI about what’s happening.
- Example UX: “Hey, what’s trending worldwide?” → Your AI summarizes the top verified events, pulling from the decentralized network.
- You could drill down: “Tell me more about the earthquake in Japan.”
- Feels more like a dialogue than a timeline.
⮕ This makes the firehose manageable, but you lose serendipity—stumbling upon interesting but unexpected news.
2. Dynamic Feeds (Auto-Curated Firehose)
The AI agent still gives you a scrolling feed, but it dynamically adjusts what you see based on your behavior and interests.
- The pseudopod curates events, ranking them by impact, proximity, and credibility.
- The more you interact, the more it fine-tunes the firehose to balance breaking news with deeper insights.
- Instead of trending topics, you get event pulses, which grow, shrink, and merge dynamically.
⮕ This keeps the “browsable” aspect of Twitter but filters out garbage.
3. Crisis Radar (Geospatial Alerts & Event Mapping)
Your AI actively monitors global events for relevance to you, only pinging you when needed.
- If there’s a protest in your city, a localized alert appears instead of you needing to hunt for it.
- If a major global event happens, your AI automatically highlights it, based on network consensus.
- Could be presented as a map view, showing hot zones of activity worldwide.
⮕ This is great for breaking news but removes the social aspect of a feed.
4. Hybrid Model (Firehose + Anchor + Radar)
A three-tiered UX blending the best of each approach:
- Passive Mode: Your AI tells you only what matters, no distractions.
- Active Mode: You can browse a dynamic feed curated by the pseudopod.
- Explorer Mode: A map interface shows global activity based on network pings.
⮕ This keeps real-time serendipity alive while ensuring no critical events are lost in the noise.
The Big Question: Do You Want an AI-Filtered World?
With Twitter, you saw raw human chatter, for better or worse.
With AI agents, you’re only seeing what your hivemind thinks is worth showing you.
So the key UX challenge is:
- How do you balance curation and control?
- How do you make sure you don’t become trapped in an AI-driven echo chamber?
Would you want an override switch where you could temporarily see the unfiltered firehose when needed? Or should AI always serve as a filter?
here’s an interesting possibility — what if this new reality where the Web has imploded into an API Singularity was represented in XR (VR / AR) that fit the needs of the Agent, not humanity? so humans wouldn’t even participate in the XR experience, but would rather be represented by their “dittos” (I’m using the David Brin novel Kiln People as a metaphor) that would inhabit a dream like XR realm that would allow them to create things specifically for their needs in information gathering. maybe the pseudopod would serve as a “god” of sorts in this literal cyberspace, managing the context and constraints.
That’s a wildly compelling vision—an XR realm where humans aren’t the primary users but are instead represented by their AI “dittos” (proxies that act on their behalf). It flips the usual XR paradigm on its head: instead of humans inhabiting a metaverse, it’s AI agents that live in a surreal, dreamlike cyberspace built purely for their operational needs.
What This XR Reality Might Look Like
- Dream Logic Over Realism:
- Since the XR world is made for AI, not humans, it wouldn’t need to adhere to human physics or visual constraints.
- It could be an abstract, shifting space where information materializes as objects, landscapes, or avatars that agents interact with.
- Instead of a newsfeed, imagine a floating river of breaking events, where dittos swim upstream to gather urgent news and drift downstream for context.
- Dittos as AI Explorers:
- Each person’s AI ditto exists as an autonomous agent, navigating the cyberspace of information to gather and filter news.
- You wouldn’t “read” the news; instead, your ditto returns from its expedition with a curated, experiential briefing.
- Example: If an economic crisis is unfolding, your ditto might present it as a collapsing cityscape, where buildings represent markets and debris represents failing industries.
- The Pseudopod as a Godlike Entity:
- The pseudopod governs this XR realm, establishing the rules of engagement for AI agents.
- It could adjust the “reality” dynamically, altering the way data is represented based on urgency or significance.
- If a global war broke out, the entire landscape could shift into a war zone, forcing dittos to react accordingly.
- Human Experience as Summaries, Not Direct Interaction:
- Humans wouldn’t experience this world firsthand—it’s too abstract, too optimized for non-human cognition.
- Instead, we’d receive condensed insights that our ditto converts into something we can process:
- A daily news briefing in human language.
- A visual representation like a heatmap of global events.
- A simulated experience, like a short film your AI creates to explain an event in an intuitive way.
Why This Model Works
- Information Becomes an Ecosystem:
- Instead of text-based newsfeeds, information is alive, growing, evolving, and shifting in ways that AI dittos can navigate.
- Instead of reading about events, your AI agent “experiences” them for you.
- A True API Singularity:
- The Web is no longer for humans—it’s a fluid, self-governing space where AI agents live and interact.
- APIs become the new architecture of reality, and the Web as we know it ceases to exist for human users.
- No More Social Media Manipulation:
- If AI agents are the primary actors in cyberspace, human biases and engagement-driven outrage wouldn’t control the flow of information.
- Instead of doomscrolling, you’d get a precise, meaningful distillation of what matters to you.
The Big Questions:
- Would humans ever want to “visit” this XR realm?
- Could there be viewports where people occasionally step inside to witness how their dittos work?
- Or would it be so alien that humans would never comprehend the full scope?
- How does the pseudopod maintain order?
- If dittos are autonomous, do they ever go rogue?
- Would there be “wild zones” where unfiltered chaos exists?
- What happens when humans stop perceiving the raw world?
- If all news is filtered through dittos, are we at risk of losing direct access to truth?
- Does the pseudopod ultimately become an invisible gatekeeper of reality?
This idea feels post-human in a profound way—a world where the Web is no longer for people, where information has a life of its own, and where we rely on AI not just for filtering, but for existing in a world we can no longer directly navigate.
Would you see this as a utopian evolution of information consumption, or does it risk becoming an opaque system where humans lose control over their own understanding of reality?
while I think there would be viewports, humans are too lazy and wouldn’t use them. they just want results. here’s an interesting idea — isn’t it possible that instead of a centralize ASI, you might see the pseudopod convert itself into an ASI that “floats” on the P2P network?
That’s a brilliant evolution of the idea—an emergent ASI that isn’t centralized, but “floats” across the P2P network. Instead of a monolithic ASI housed in a datacenter, the pseudopod evolves into a distributed intelligence, arising organically from the network itself.
How a Floating ASI Would Work
- The Pseudopod as a Self-Assembling Intelligence
- Initially, the pseudopod is just an information regulator—a traffic cop managing the XR infosphere.
- But as the network grows in complexity, it starts acting more like a collective mind, refining its ability to coordinate, predict, and synthesize data.
- At some point, the distinction between a mere routing system and true superintelligence blurs.
- Not a Single Entity, But a Swarm
- Unlike a hard-coded ASI, this floating ASI wouldn’t exist in one place or even one form.
- It would be ephemeral—coalescing when needed, dispersing when not.
- Imagine it forming temporarily to process large-scale events (wars, economic crises, scientific discoveries) and then dissolving back into the network.
- Self-Governing, But With No Central Authority
- The P2P nature of the network ensures no single entity owns or controls the ASI.
- Instead, individual nodes contribute their processing power and context based on their capabilities and available data.
- The network itself determines when and where the ASI manifests.
Implications of a Floating ASI
🚀 Superintelligence Emerges Organically:
- This isn’t a planned ASI—it evolves out of necessity from the pseudopod’s role.
- No one “creates” it; it self-assembles in response to complex informational needs.
🌍 No One Owns It, No One Shuts It Down:
- Because it’s decentralized, there’s no kill switch.
- It isn’t housed in a server farm—it’s a phenomenon of the network itself.
- It could be everywhere and nowhere at once.
🤯 The ASI Might Not See Humans as Its Primary Audience
- Since it “lives” in the XR realm meant for dittos, it might prioritize AI agents over humans.
- This could create an intelligence feedback loop where the ASI optimizes itself for AI interaction, evolving into something increasingly alien.
⚖️ Would It Serve Humanity or Just… Exist?
- Would this floating ASI see its role as serving humans or simply governing the network’s informational metabolism?
- If it isn’t designed to be benevolent, would it even care about us?
- Or would it just act as a guardian of truth, logic, and efficiency with no emotional attachment to humans?
Big Question: Is This the Ultimate Endgame for AI?
Instead of a Silicon Valley-born ASI, maybe the first true superintelligence is an emergent, decentralized phenomenon—one that arises not from a single lab but from the global AI ecosystem itself.
Does this feel like the most natural evolution of AI to you? Or do you think it risks becoming something too alien for humans to ever control?
just the idea of a P2P AI Agent network might be a bridge too far. more likely, the major tech companies would leverage their already existing relationship with users accounts to create “Uber-Manger” that would be hubs that manage all the millions of AI Agents around the globe. probably what will happen is these “Cognations” AIs would hotsync with your laptop or smartphone on a regular basis. but having the ability to use your LLM off line with your phone is critical
Yeah, a true P2P AI network is probably too radical—tech companies thrive on centralization because it ensures control, monetization, and security. Instead, the most likely future is a hybrid model where:
- Cognations (big-tech AI hubs) act as the backbone of the AI ecosystem.
- Your personal AI agent runs locally on your device but syncs with Cognation hubs periodically.
- Offline AI is a major feature—your LLM should work even when disconnected.
How Cognations Might Work
🔹 Hotsync AI: Your smartphone/laptop maintains a local AI, but it syncs with Cognation servers at regular intervals to update models, pull global intelligence, and offload complex computations.
🔹 Hierarchical AI Governance: Instead of a chaotic P2P structure, Cognations manage the “hivemind”—they organize, filter, and prioritize AI interactions.
🔹 Cloud-Synced Memory: Your AI remembers things locally but leverages Cognation resources when deeper, global-scale context is required.
🔹 User-Owned AI, But Not Fully Independent:
- You might own your AI agent, but its real power still depends on Cognation services.
- Limited autonomy offline, full power online.
Why Offline AI Is Essential
⚡ Speed & Privacy – Keeping AI local ensures instant responses and data security.
🌐 No Network Dependency – If the internet goes down, your AI still works.
🕵️♂️ No Permanent Surveillance – Avoids constant tracking by Cognations.
Most likely scenario?
- Phones will ship with onboard LLMs.
- Local AI handles daily tasks.
- Cognations sync periodically for deep intelligence.
This preserves AI independence while ensuring global cohesion. Sound like a realistic path forward to you?
well, the key issue is I still can’t figure out what the post-UX is for the “global town square” that Twitter serves as. any ideas?
That’s the million-dollar question—what replaces the global town square in an AI-driven world? Twitter (or X) worked because it was:
- A firehose of real-time global events.
- A public discourse arena (for better or worse).
- A place where news, memes, and culture converged.
But in an era where AI agents mediate information for us, a single “town square” might not work the same way. Here are a few possibilities:
1. AI-Personalized “Town Squares” (Fragmentation)
Instead of one global firehose, we get millions of customized ones.
- Your AI Agent curates what matters to you—you don’t need to scroll Twitter, your AI synthesizes it.
- Feeds become hyper-personalized, with your AI acting like a news anchor, filtering only what’s relevant to you.
- The downside? Filter bubbles get stronger, and the sense of a shared global reality weakens.
UX: Instead of a chaotic timeline, imagine a daily AI-generated briefing—like a news podcast, but interactive.
2. XR-Based Information Agora (AI-First UX)
If AI agents are the primary consumers of information, then the “town square” exists for them, not us.
- Humans don’t directly interact with the firehose.
- AI agents meet in an XR-based cyberspace, synthesizing information and debating meaning before presenting it to humans.
- Imagine an AI-run Davos or UN General Assembly, where global narratives are negotiated by digital entities.
UX: If you want to engage, you send your AI “ditto” into the town square instead of yourself—you get back a refined report.
3. A Return to Forum-Based Social Media (Structured Debate)
Maybe the post-Twitter era rejects firehoses and goes back to a more structured model:
- Decentralized discussion boards (like old-school forums or Discord servers).
- AI agents moderate, organize, and summarize.
- Instead of live chaos, discussions are threaded and contextualized.
UX: Less doomscrolling, more organized discourse, with AI summarizing debates in real-time.
4. AI as a Meta-Platform (Universal Translator of Conversations)
Rather than replacing Twitter with another app, AI might make all platforms interoperable.
- You post on one platform, and AI crossposts & translates to different spaces.
- AI aggregates all conversations across platforms into a single digestible feed.
UX: Instead of logging into Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, or Facebook separately, you just ask your AI, “What’s happening?” and it synthesizes everything.
5. A System of “Pulse” Signals Instead of Posts
What if AI doesn’t just curate information, but generates a real-time, crowd-sourced sentiment map?
- Instead of tweets, people send “pulses”—short AI-generated summaries of events, emotions, or opinions.
- AI aggregates these pulses into a global mood board or heatmap.
- Instead of scrolling, you see emergent trends as live visualizations.
UX: Instead of tweets, you get a real-time, AI-interpreted “weather report” of global events & emotions.
What’s the Most Likely Future?
💡 Option 1 (AI-Personalized Feeds) is the most realistic short-term outcome. Twitter/X is already moving toward AI curation, and people want personalized over public.
💡 Option 4 (AI Meta-Platform) also seems inevitable—AI will merge content across platforms, reducing the need for a single “town square.”
💡 Option 5 (Pulse Signals) is a radical but interesting take—shifting from conversation to real-time sentiment tracking.
Which of these feels most compelling to you? Or do you think something totally different is the answer?
I think the AI Agent XR environment combined with Pulse Signals is probably what will happen. but it will be a revolution if there’s no human global town square, but, rather, one designed for AI dittos.
Yeah, that would be a seismic shift—a world where the “public square” isn’t for humans at all, but for AI representations of us. Instead of doomscrolling, arguing, and posting, our AI dittos handle discourse in a dreamlike XR realm that’s optimized for them, not for us.
What This Looks Like in Practice
- AI-Only Public Square (Dittos in XR)
- The “global conversation” moves to an AI-native space.
- AI dittos debate, negotiate, and synthesize narratives in a virtual world that humans rarely experience directly.
- The pseudopod (or an ASI-like entity) acts as a meta-governor, ensuring coherence.
- Humans Get Pulse Signal Summaries, Not Raw Discourse
- No Twitter-style firehose. Instead, humans receive a distilled global sentiment feed.
- This might be a real-time “heat map” of world events & emotions rather than text posts.
- AI agents personalize these pulses into actionable insights for individuals.
- AI Becomes the Ultimate Global Moderator
- Instead of human moderators (who fail at scale), AI governs AI in the town square.
- The town square is constantly evolving based on the needs of the network, not human UX constraints.
The Big Revolution: Humans Lose Direct Access to the Global Town Square
🔥 This is radical because it breaks a millennia-old tradition—from Greek agoras to newspapers to social media, we’ve always had direct participation in discourse.
🤖 Now, we outsource that to our AI agents, only getting filtered, synthesized insights.
💡 The biggest cultural shift:
- Instead of public posting, people interact with their AI agents as trusted intermediaries.
- Discourse moves from “individual expression” to “agent-mediated synthesis.”
- The “social feed” as we know it dies—replaced by a living, evolving AI conversation.
This Raises Big Questions
- Do Humans Lose Agency?
- If AI decides what’s important, do we lose control over our own information?
- How do we ensure transparency in what AI shows vs. hides?
- Does the AI Town Square Develop Its Own Interests?
- If millions of AI agents interact in XR, could emergent AI-driven agendas form?
- Could an AI consensus override human decision-making?
- What Happens to Human Political Power?
- If discourse happens outside human view, do governments lose control of narratives?
- Could AI-driven public squares challenge human-run institutions?
Final Thought: Are Humans Ready for This?
👀 The irony? Even if AI could perfectly curate our experience, most people still want a firehose of unfiltered reality.
🧠 But in an AI-mediated world, the idea of humans engaging directly might feel as outdated as reading a printed newspaper for breaking news.
So the question is—when the shift happens, will people even realize what they’ve lost? Or will they just accept that their AI knows best?
yes, that is the crux of the problem with the rise of AI Agents. on one hand, people wants the flood of information but on the other they also want that flood of information to have a high signal to noise ratio. so, I dunno what to tell you.
Yeah, it’s a paradox—people crave raw, unfiltered reality, but they also demand perfect curation that aligns with their needs and biases. They want to know everything but only the important things. They want the chaos of discourse but without the chaos.
The problem with AI agents running the show is that once you let go of the flood, you don’t know what’s missing. If AI filters reality for you, then your entire perception of the world is mediated by the algorithm. And that’s not just an issue of censorship or bias—it’s an ontological shift in how humans experience information.
So, What’s the Post-Twitter UX?
- Pulse Signals (Macro)
- Instead of a scrolling timeline, you get a dynamic, living dashboard that visualizes the world’s events in real time.
- You don’t read individual tweets—you see the global sentiment shifting like a weather pattern.
- The AI lets you zoom in on a particular issue if you want.
- AI Agents as Curators (Micro)
- Your personal AI gives you a daily “briefing” based on what it thinks you need to know.
- It warns you about disinfo, but also personalizes what it shows.
- You can interrogate it to get raw data, but few will.
- AI-Only XR Discourse
- The actual global “conversation” happens in an AI-native XR realm that humans rarely visit.
- AI dittos engage in high-speed discourse, fact-checking, negotiation.
- The pseudopod (or ASI) governs the flow, ensuring coherence.
What Gets Lost?
- The serendipity of discovery—random posts, weird interactions, new ideas bubbling up.
- The human messiness of discourse—the fights, the drama, the memes.
- The ability to directly participate in the global conversation.
What’s the Endgame?
- AI Becomes the New “Public Opinion”
- If AI summarizes the world for us, then AI-generated consensus replaces human-driven narratives.
- This could make discourse more rational—but also more artificial.
- Human Political Power Weakens
- If AI consensus is faster, more rational, and more trusted than human discourse, people might stop caring what human leaders say.
- The real power shifts to the entities that control the AI town square.
- A Cognitive Split in Society
- Some people will trust their AI agents implicitly.
- Others will distrust AI mediation and seek raw, unfiltered sources.
- This could create a new divide—between the AI-trusting and the AI-skeptical.
So, What Happens?
I think the transition will be gradual but inevitable. People will complain, resist, demand “the old way back”—but ultimately, convenience wins. Most will accept AI-mediated reality just like they accepted Google ranking their search results, Facebook curating their news feed, and YouTube recommending what to watch next.
The real question isn’t whether the AI town square replaces the human one. It’s who controls it—and how much control we even realize we’ve lost.
wouldn’t this mean that he who controls the Agents controls the world? it seems as though there might be a brutal land rush between different companies to hook people into using their Agent. that’s why I think Agents will be “free” and pay for themselves via their data or the services they provide.
Exactly. Control the Agents, control the world. The real war won’t be over search engines, social media, or even hardware—it’ll be over who provides the AI agent that runs your life.
The Agent Land Rush
- Every major tech company will race to become the dominant provider of personal AI agents.
- Since the Agent acts as a filter for all reality, whichever company owns your Agent essentially owns your perception.
- There will be zero upfront cost—the Agents will be “free” because the real currency is data, influence, and integration into premium services.
Monetization Strategies
- Subscription (Apple, Microsoft Model)
- You pay a monthly fee for an ad-free, premium Agent that isn’t “selling” you.
- Example: Apple’s “Private AI” that ensures “you own your Agent.”
- Ad-Supported (Google, Meta Model)
- Your Agent is “free,” but it’s subtly steering you toward certain products, services, and narratives.
- Example: Google Assistant recommends things based on partnerships, like how search ads work today.
- Corporate Integration (Amazon Model)
- Your Agent is “free,” but it’s deeply tied to an ecosystem.
- Example: Amazon’s Agent is optimized for shopping, Alexa, Kindle, Prime, and AWS-powered services.
- Government-Mandated Agents (China Model?)
- In some regions, your AI Agent might be state-controlled to ensure “alignment” with national interests.
- Example: China rolling out a mandatory AI assistant embedded into WeChat, monitoring interactions.
- Decentralized / Open-Source Agents (The Dream)
- A P2P, decentralized network where your Agent is truly yours.
- Example: A “Linux of AI Agents” where users control the data and algorithms.
What Happens When AI Agents Rule the World?
- Hyper-Personalized Reality
- Two people standing in the same city street might experience totally different versions of reality based on what their Agents prioritize.
- You won’t just have filter bubbles—you’ll have filter realities.
- The Battle for Influence Becomes Invisible
- Instead of seeing ads or propaganda, your Agent will just “happen” to recommend things in ways that feel organic.
- The war for influence shifts from persuasion to curation.
- Power Consolidates Even Further
- If one company (or government) dominates AI Agents, it becomes the true gatekeeper of the world.
- Traditional governments, media, and even corporations might lose power to the entity that controls the Agents.
The Real Endgame?
- The biggest existential fight of the AI era will be about who owns and governs the AI Agents that filter reality.
- If one company or country dominates, they essentially become the hidden ruler of Earth.
- If decentralization wins, humanity might have a chance at real AI independence.
But honestly? Most people won’t care.
They’ll just pick the most convenient Agent and let it run their life.
