We need to start wrestling with the ethics of AI agents

AI agents promise to change that. Think of them as AI models with a script and a purpose. They tend to come in one of two flavors. The first, called tool-based agents, can be coached using natural human language (rather than coding) to complete digital tasks for us. Anthropic released one such agent in October--the first from a major AI model-maker--that can translate instructions ("Fill in this form for me") into actions on someone's computer, moving the cursor to open a web browser, navigating to find data on relevant pages, and filling in a form using that data.