We Need to Control AI Agents Now

In 2010--well before the rise of ChatGPT and Claude and all the other sprightly, conversational AI models--an army of bots briefly wiped out 1 trillion of value across the NASDAQ and other stock exchanges. Lengthy investigations were undertaken to figure out what had happened and why--and how to prevent it from happening again. The Securities and Exchange Commission's report on the matter blamed high-frequency-trading algorithms unexpectedly engaging in a mindless "hot potato" buying and selling of contracts back and forth to one another. A "flash crash," as the incident was called, may seem quaint relative to what lies ahead. That's because, even amid all the AI hype, a looming part of the AI revolution is under-examined: "agents." Agents are AIs that act independently on behalf of humans.