ICML paper warns against platform agents, calls for user-controlled 'agent advocates'

xuanalogue · x · 2026-09-19

Reacting to Meta's new Muse connectors that let developers plug APIs into its agent stack, researchers Sayash Kapoor, Noam Kolt, and Seth Lazar point to their ICML 2025 position paper 'Build Agent Advocates, Not Platform Agents.' The paper argues that platform-controlled LLM agents will deepen surveillance, tighten lock-in, and entrench incumbents, and proposes user-controlled 'agent advocates' supported by non-platform compute/models, open interoperability and safety standards, and antitrust-style market regulation.

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