Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad at Digital Dopplegangers:
With the arrival of AI agents, systems designed not merely to assist but to act, adapt, and persist, the line between delegation and substitution is quietly blurring. What we handed off for convenience is now capable of continuing without us. The most unsettling change in our digital lives is not that systems can act on our behalf, but that they increasingly do not need us to do so. Hear me out: At first, delegation feels harmless. Your email client drafts replies while you are in meetings. Your calendar assistant proposes times and resolves conflicts. You glance, approve, move on. Nothing is sent without you. You are still clearly in control.
Then one afternoon you miss a notification. The draft goes out anyway. It is polite, accurate, and entirely in your voice. The meeting gets scheduled. The thread moves forward. When you notice, there is nothing to fix. No harm done. A week later, it happens again. You are on a flight, offline for a few hours. When you land, there are new calendar holds, follow-up messages, and a decision that has already been acknowledged on your behalf. The system inferred what you would have wanted and acted accordingly. It did not ask because asking would have slowed things down.
From the outside, everything looks better than before. You are more responsive. You never miss a follow-up. Conversations progress smoothly. Colleagues remark that you are “on top of things,” even during weeks when you feel barely present. The transition from assistance to continuity is invisible, marked only by the absence of friction.
More here.
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