The next frontier isn't AI—it's artificial societies of millions of interacting agents
mikeflache · x · 2026-10-07
AI researcher Nick Jennings argues in Singularity Hub that the deeper challenge isn't how smart a single agent becomes, but what happens when millions of agents interact at scale — "artificial societies."
Key points:
- AI is shifting from generating answers to acting autonomously over time: monitoring, deciding, negotiating, executing tasks;
- Envisioned scenarios include your agent negotiating a mortgage with your bank's agent or rescheduling travel directly with airline and hotel agents;
- He argues this future is closer than it sounds and research focus should shift to system-level questions of multi-agent interaction;
- He rejects the utopia-vs-catastrophe framing in favor of pragmatic study of emergent behavior and governance of AI populations.
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