When AI agents take the lead, do humans lose control?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
AI agents are taking charge. They’re booking appointments, managing your inbox, and handling tasks with minimal input. They promise convenience, but some have leaked data, made surprise purchases, and even tried to replicate themselves. Big Tech and the military are betting big on their future. As we hand over more control, are we ready for what comes next?
In this episode:
- Grace Huckins (@grace_huckins), AI Reporter, MIT Technology Review
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Sarí el-Khalili, Amy Walters, Diana Ferrero, and Sonia Bhagat, with Phillip Lanos, Melanie Marich, Marya Khan, Kisaa Zehra, Farhan Rafid, and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Spencer Cline, Sarí el-Khalili, Diana Ferrero, Tracie Hunte, Tamara Khandaker, Kylene Kiang, Phillip Lanos, Chloe K. Li, Melanie Marich, Amy Walters, and Noor Wazwaz. Our editorial interns are Marya Khan, Kisaa Zehra, and Farhan Rafid. Our host is Malika Bilal. Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Aya Elmileik is lead of audience engagement.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad Al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today, a new breed of autonomous AI agents is here to take charge. |
| 0:16.0 | It's impossible to be completely confident that the agents will do what we want them to do. |
| 0:21.8 | So what happens when we give artificial intelligence the power to act on its own? |
| 0:29.1 | I'm Malika Bilal, and this is The Take. |
| 0:44.7 | I'm Grace Huckins. I'm an AI reporter at MIT Technology Review, and I'm coming in from San Francisco. |
| 0:58.8 | Grace, welcome to the take. It is good to have you here. So you wrote a piece for the MIT Technology Review, entitled, Are We Ready to Hand AI Agents the Keys? So before we decide that, let's start with the basics. What is an AI agent? And how is it different from the |
| 1:04.9 | AI tools that most of us are already using? Yeah, it sounds like a simple question. It can be a pretty complicated one. |
| 1:13.4 | There's not any uniform definition of what makes an AI agent. People have been talking about |
| 1:19.1 | agents for a long time, and it just sort of means like an AI system or a computer system that |
| 1:24.6 | can act on its own. That doesn't need a human to sort of pilot it. |
| 1:29.1 | So one way to sort of think about what an agent might be is if you're working with an AI system, |
| 1:34.6 | but it can take some actions outside of that chat box window, |
| 1:37.7 | like look at your emails or maybe even send an email or execute or deploy some code. |
| 1:42.9 | If you can give it a goal and tell it what to do and then |
| 1:45.5 | walk away from your computer and make yourself a coffee and come back and it's achieved that |
| 1:49.7 | goal, then that might count as an agent. |
| 1:53.0 | Okay. |
| 1:53.6 | What about things like smart thermostats? |
| 1:56.4 | What about things like an Alexa or a Google Home Nest? |
| 2:00.7 | What about these products? Is this what we're |
| 2:02.3 | talking about when we say AI agent? Oh, so yes. I should say, you know, there's, it's important, |
... |
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