AI Is Causing a Crisis of Agency - The Atlantic

archive.today webpage capture Saved from history←priornext→ 31 May 2026 18:45:21 UTC Redirected from no other snapshots from this url All snapshots from host www.theatlantic.com WebpageScreenshot sharedownload .zipreport bug or abuseBuy me a coffee SKIP TO CONTENT Site Navigation Popular Latest Newsletters Sign In Subscribe TECHNOLOGY The Feeling of Control Slipping Away AI is causing a crisis of agency. By Charlie Warzel Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Solarseven / Getty. MAY 30, 2026, 7 AM ET SHARE SAVE Back in the web-traffic-obsessed days of 2018, at a time of dawning awareness of how easily audiences online could be manipulated and spoofed by bots, the writer Max Read argued that the internet had crossed a threshold known as “the Inversion.” Not only had bots proliferated across the internet; they had come to constitute it. In outnumbering humans, bots were also loosening everyone’s grasp on the very reality of online experience. “What’s gone from the internet, after

archive.today webpage capture Saved from history←priornext→ 31 May 2026 18:45:21 UTC Redirected from no other snapshots from this url All snapshots from host www.theatlantic.com WebpageScreenshot sharedownload .zipreport bug or abuseBuy me a coffee SKIP TO CONTENT Site Navigation Popular Latest Newsletters Sign In Subscribe TECHNOLOGY The Feeling of Control Slipping Away AI is causing a crisis of agency. By Charlie Warzel Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Solarseven / Getty. MAY 30, 2026, 7 AM ET SHARE SAVE Back in the web-traffic-obsessed days of 2018, at a time of dawning awareness of ho