Personal agents optimize for consumption, not empowerment, AI researcher warns
omarsar0 · x · 2026-09-26
AI researcher Omar Sanseviero (omarsar0) observes that most personal agents today are heavily optimized to drive consumption — shopping, booking flights, planning vacations. He acknowledges consumer agents are useful and companies have incentives, but calls for more human-centric agents that unlock real opportunities: starting a business, finding a job, running a company, or learning something new.
He argues today's agents simply aren't trained and aligned for these goals yet, calls it a problem worth solving, credits a few companies trying to build more human-centric AI models, and asks: who is building personal agents to solve this?
More from AGI Musings
- Sherry Turkle on chatbots as objects of emotional attachment and the risks of grieftech — PeterBowdenLive · 2026-09-26
- ResolVI models measurement errors to fix single-cell RNA data, cutting false signals from 14.8% to under 0.01% — bravo_abad · 2026-09-26
- Daniel Lemire: AI can now write theses, so what is a PhD worth? — lemire · 2026-09-26
- Unsafe AI is less useful: safety is a prerequisite for faster adoption — mchorowitz · 2026-09-26
- Sriram Krishnan says DHH's AI speech for engineers will 'be seen as prophetic' — rseroter · 2026-09-26
- Personal agents today: build it yourself, trust a startup, or hand data to an ad giant — neal_lathia · 2026-09-26