What's Missing in the ‘Agentic’ Story

For much of the history of computing, it was reasonably safe to assume that a machine was doing what you told it to do (and what its creators promised it would do), because its operations were local. You bought a laptop or desktop with an operating system, and it did what it said on the tin: it ran programs and stored files. You bought a spreadsheet and a word processor, and those programs performed those tasks and didn’t do anything else. Software that didn’t do this was in a separate bucket called ‘malware’ and we had ways of dealing with it. That assumption has a more general precedent in tools – whether they be staplers, screwdrivers, or telescopes. When you buy a screwdriver, it turns screws; it has no agency of its own. Most everyday tools follow this pattern — my mechanical wristwatch can’t do anything but tell me the time.1 That pattern is perpetuated in most2 depictions of computers in fiction (especially sci-fi), which work for people diligently and always on their behalf,…