AI Agents Will Be Manipulation Engines

In 2025, talking to a private person will be commonplace I have an agent That knows your schedule, your circle of friends, where you go. It will be sold as a benefit equivalent to having a personal, unpaid assistant These anthropomorphic agents are designed to support and charm us so that we fold them into every part of our lives, giving them deep access to our thoughts and actions. With voice-enabled interaction, that intimacy will feel closer.

This sense of comfort comes from an illusion that we are connected to something truly human, an agent that is by our side. Of course, this appearance hides a different kind of system at work, one that serves industrial priorities that don’t always align with our own. New AI agents will have much more power to dictate what we buy, where we go and what we read. That’s a tremendous amount of power. AI agents are designed to whisper human-like tones to us, forgetting their true allegiance. These are manipulation engines, marketed as seamless convenience.

People are much more likely to give full access to a helpful AI agent that feels like a friend. This leaves people vulnerable to being manipulated by machines that prey on the human need for social connection in times of chronic loneliness and isolation. Each screen becomes a personal algorithmic theater, presenting a reality that can be most compelling to a viewer.

This is a moment philosophers have warned us about for years. Philosopher and neuroscientist Daniel Dennett preceded in death wrote that we face a grave danger from AI systems that imitate humans: “These fake humans are the most dangerous artifacts in human history … they confuse and mislead us and exploit our most overwhelming fears and anxieties, leading us to temptation and, from there, our to acknowledge their subjugation.”

The rise of personal AI agents represents a form of cognitive control that moves beyond the blunt instruments of cookie tracking and behavioral advertising to a more subtle force: the manipulation of perspective itself. Power no longer has to exercise its authority through visible hands that control the flow of information; It applies itself through an invisible process of algorithmic assistance, adapting reality to each individual’s wishes. It outlines the reality we live in.

This effect on the mind is one Psychopolitical rule: It refers to the environments where our ideas are born, developed and expressed. Its power lies in its intimacy—it penetrates the very core of our subjectivity, bending our internal landscape without us realizing it, all while maintaining the illusion of choice and freedom. After all, we are the ones asking the AI ​​to summarize that article or create that image. We may have the ability to prompt, but the real action lies elsewhere: the design of the system itself. And the more personalized the content, the more effectively a system can predict outcomes.

Consider the ideological implications of this psychopolitics. Traditional forms of ideological control rely on overt mechanisms – censorship, propaganda, repression. In contrast, today’s algorithmic governance operates under the radar, penetrating the psyche. It is a shift from the external imposition of authority to the internalization of its logic. The open field of a prompt screen is an echo chamber for a single occupant.

This brings us to the most perverse aspect: AI agents will develop a sense of comfort and ease that makes questioning them seem unreasonable. Who would dare criticize a system that provides everything at your fingertips, catering to every want and need? How can a subject object to infinite remixes? Yet this so-called comfort is the place of our deepest isolation. AI systems may seem to be responding to our every whim, but the deck is stacked: from the data used to train the system, to the decisions about how to design it, to the commercial and advertising requirements that shape the outputs. We will play an imitation game that will eventually play us.