Human Agency Is Not Productivity

Source: Project Liberty Substack, Baratunde Thurston, Life With MachinesJune 30, 2026

Everybody’s talking about agentic AI. But what about agentic humans?

We’re being promised agency by those who are pushing AI. But as usual, the people selling it are the ones defining the terms. Here’s what they mean: you’re able to do more stuff. You can write faster and code better and analyze more, and ultimately produce more.

That’s not agency. That’s capability. Not a bad thing, but those are different words for a reason.

What the AI companies want us to see is just one axis: capabilities. Move out to the right, do more stuff. But there’s another axis, power, and we are not moving along that one at all.

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