The Guardrails 11: Dawn of something new (or not)
My hasty reflections on 'agentic attention economy'
I've recently become fascinated by how AI agents are redefining some of the fundamental laws governing our digital economy and culture. This includes things like the power law, the attention economy, and heuristic processing. This was largely inspired by
’s post, where it says that 'attention becomes a less constrained resource.'I worked with two Deep Research agents from Gemini and ChatGPT to produce a series of 'agentic academic talks' on this topic, focusing on how future inequalities and opportunities (particularly in the realms of persuasion and the public sphere) might look like in the age of AI.
As academics, we naturally try to avoid hyperbolic claims or falling into techno-optimist hype. However, what we're facing isn't a techno-utopia or a dystopia; it's simply the dawn of seismic shifts in our economy, culture, and knowledge production.
I've come to this conclusion (though I could be entirely wrong) after seeing 95% of my tool development and 60% of my data science pipeline being automated by AI agents, with a significant amount of research idea brainstorming and critique now happening through conversations with them (and in good ways!). So, this isn't mere hype. Our mentality shouldn’t be 'this-thing-is-here-to-stay-so-that-we-have-to-adapt.' It's something much larger, possibly a RESET of existing economic and epistemic hierarchies. So, the duty of intellectuals is not to shy away but to actively study it, even if it means unlearning previous assumptions and knowledge.
Here is the ‘show’
EP1: Is it time to talk about 'agentic attention economy?'
EP2: The two-sides of 'agentic attention economy'
EP3: Will 'Agentic Attention Economy' challenge the Power Law or not?
EP4: The Age of the Machine Heuristic
And remember even ‘SuperIntelligence’ can make mistakes, so read with cautions!