Agentic AI: User Empowerment or Enclosure?

Agentic AI promises a more flexible form of digital agency: systems that can act on users' behalf, from filtering content to negotiating prices to selecting services. Whether it will empower users is an open question, and we argue that the answer depends on more than the technology. We conduct a comparative case analysis of four more mature domains where similar forms of agency arose: browser-based ad blockers, platform recommender systems, financial robo-advisors, and email spam governance. Acr

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ethics.ai (6 August 2026), “Agentic AI: User Empowerment or Enclosure?,” evidence record 17910, https://ethics.ai/record/17910 (originally published by arXiv cs.HC).

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