The Age of the All-Access AI Agent Is Here

"For years, the cost of using "free" services from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and other Big Tech firms has been handing over your data. Uploading your life into the cloud and using free tech brings conveniences, but it puts personal information in the hands of giant corporations that will often be looking to monetize it. Now, the next wave of generative AI systems are likely to want more access to your data than ever before."

""AI agents, in order to have their full functionality, in order to be able to access applications, often need to access the operating system or the OS level of the device on which you're running them," says Harry Farmer, a senior researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute, whose work has included studying the impact of AI assistants and found that they may cause "profound threat" to cybersecurity and privacy."

Generative AI is evolving from text-only chatbots to autonomous agents and assistants that perform tasks and take actions on users' behalf. These agents often require access to operating-system level functions and significant personal data to provide personalization and full functionality. Granting such access places sensitive information in the hands of large technology companies that commonly monetize user data. Beyond prior copyright and training-data concerns, AI agents introduce new privacy and cybersecurity threats because autonomy combined with deeper system access amplifies potential misuse, breaches, and unintended consequences.

Read at WIRED