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Why Normal People Aren’t Using AI Agents
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2026
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To be clear, "normal" people are using LLMs like crazy. This I believe is specifically talking about is installed local agents. Boomers and non tech industry suits are using LLMs left and right and won't shut up about them.
They are not using agents. Most people use LLMs as Google on steroids.
Google on LSD (the hallucinate results)
99% nudify apps
Nah, not for mosy people. I think that's actually more common with people who use local models (maybe that's what you were saying though?). My, albeit few, interractions with "normal" people have been pretty scary with how much they use AI in many ways. Most of my friends are very tech savvy and my family goes to me about stuff like this so they don't use any either (because I've taught them, not just told, how bad and dangerous it can be). It's not very often I talk with anyone else about this but, as said, the times I have it's been real scary.
Doesn't help the conversation that some LLM chat systems call minor customization of the prompt making an agent.
Under duress I use CoPilot Chat at work. No, the basic sad customization I did along the lines of "don't be sycophantic, always cite sources, use these specific official documentation sites as sources before searching outside of them and clearly call out when you search outside them" that customization isn't making a damn agent, it's adjusting the prompt and saving those changes you disingenuous marketing fucks!
I've been "adjusting the prompt and saving changes" with Claude code for the past 9 months (it's not ready to have a baby yet), it has been steadily improving over those months, a lot of that seems to be in the models and harnesses provided by Anthropic, but not a small part of it is the customization of the prompt to do what I want the first time instead of making me redirect it constantly.
lol it's true. My mom sends me screenshots of AI chats every fucking day.
Just the other day I was pissed off. My dad missed some deadline to request money from the government. I told him to call them, they might be able to do something anyways. He was like "nah, they'll never do that, why would they have a deadline if they do it after the deadline yadayada"
Then a few days later he told me "oh that gpt thing told me to just try, I might be lucky and they pay out even after the deadline, he was very reassuring, so I'll try calling them!"
Man chatgpt would fucking tell you to try your luck if you're 12 years over the deadline, but god forbid your son tells you the exact same thing and you even consider calling them lol
There was some research recently that showed the same thing. People who are "dug in" on a topic, usually a political topic, will shut down when a person tries to persuade them of an alternative, but are much more open to hear the same arguments from AI and actually reconsider their position.
I believe this is a big reason why X-Ai was so important for conservatives to get off of the ground, they were afraid all the crazy would start wearing off if people asked the "woke" models for the truth.
Yeah this is the deal. I'm a Gen x er and I use Gemini for some tasks - I want a quick id of a component or reference some knowledge chunk to verify something. I have absolutely no use for an agent.
i know some tech people that uses it.
In as far as the Google Home speakers are "Agents" we've had one for several years now. It's good for a laugh once every so often when it gives a wildly random response to something we ask it for. Would we trust it to do anything like lock or unlock the house door? I don't think so, probably not ever, definitely not today.