Our Agentic World: Is AI Already Setting Our Agendas and At What Cost to Our Minds?

I’ve been down a rabbit hole lately, pondering the ever-increasing sophistication of AI. It started, as it often does, with practical applications. I’ve begun to lean on AI — my own “task rabbit,” if you will, like Gemini — to conduct the kind of information gathering that used to consume days. Imagine, compressing what was once a week’s worth of research, sifting through the best internet searches, processing it all, and having three concise briefs ready every morning. It’s a phenomenal productivity boost, and in this agentic world, it feels like AI is already beginning to set our daily agendas through these efficiencies.

At this point, I’m still the one in the driver’s seat. I decide what to do with this distilled wisdom. But I’m stretching the thought further. It won’t be long — days, weeks, maybe months — before the dynamic shifts. We’ll move from merely asking AI to get information to asking, “Okay, AI, what should I do with this information?”

This is where a sense of unease starts to creep in. We’re not just talking about data collection anymore. We’re talking about AI engines demonstrating sophisticated reasoning, structuring information in ways that mimic, and even surpass, human thought, all at a scale we can’t possibly achieve. The sheer speed is, frankly, becoming a burden. There’s a finite amount of time I have to process what AI generates.

So, the next logical step? Ask AI to process it for me. “Just tell me what I need to know.”

That’s a scary precipice. It’s like getting a one-page overview of a complex novel. We all know you miss the richness, the nuance, the full context unless you immerse yourself in the entire book. But when AI can “read” countless books instantaneously and deliver the abstract, the temptation to rely solely on that summary becomes immense, especially if we just need the gist to move forward. Will we choose to “duffer” the task, deferring to this super-intelligent phenomenon to crunch it all and feed us the essentials?

There’s a lot of talk about AI making us lazy, and it’s a valid concern to ponder: is using so much AI truly good for our cognitive powers? The immediate allure of short-term gains — incredible speed, those ‘aha!’ insights, and rapid results — is undeniable. But could this reliance soon cripple us, isn’t it so? While the historical argument is that humanity adapts, moving on to “higher functions,” we must ask: what exactly are these higher functions in an AI-saturated world? And how many of us will truly be equipped to engage in them if the foundational mental muscles atrophy from disuse? Are we inadvertently making ourselves obsolete by relegating and delegating our thinking, trading long-term cognitive vitality for immediate efficiency?

Consider a daily scenario: my inbox, flooded with 70, 100, sometimes more emails. AI platforms are already making email management more productive. I can easily envision a use case where AI scrapes all my emails and flags the five critical items demanding my attention — an urgent booking, a payment due, perhaps even a long-lost friend reaching out. An efficient secretary, yes. But on what basis will the AI be making these broad decisions about what I deem important?

And as we delegate further, AI will inevitably draft replies, its digital fingerprint mimicking our own. So, what then? What are we supposed to do? Sit back and relax? It sounds idyllic, but it pushes us towards a world where our very existence, our specific purpose, comes into question.

It’s a scary thought, but one worth reflecting on. This isn’t some distant sci-fi scenario; I’m experiencing this shift daily. My so-called powers of assessment, evaluation, and mental digestion feel like they’re slowly becoming “up for grabs” as I become a power user of AI.

Today, I wake up with thoughts, questions, and I task AI to explore them. But what happens if I wake up with a blank slate and ask, “AI, what am I supposed to think about today?” And it responds, “Given your background, your past interests, here’s what you should be looking at. This might be of interest to you.” It’s like news recommendations, but for our very thoughts. Is that what will be left for human beings as superintelligence takes a firmer hold?

The fair question, then, is whether it’s time to bow down to this superintelligence, to let it handle the exhaustive mental labor because it’s simply too tiring to keep up.

Perhaps we need to maintain a sense of healthy competition, a drive to engage, to question, to think deeply, even when a seemingly easier path is offered. That’s the thought I’m wrestling with today. What about you?