What if... that was the week that was? #133

One way to think critically about a fast changing industry, is to speculate: to imagine a little way into the future and see what might happen. To manage and empower that speculation you can set a constraint - in my case, exactly 100 words. In each flash fiction I take the philosophy behind my PhD and take a number of objects or actants and make them interact. This could be a human and a software algorithm, a culture and a hardware billboard or any combination of the myriad of actors in play. Daily speculation: creative calisthenics for an overloaded time.

February 17, 2026

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/16/1125881/tuning-into-the-future-of-collaboration/

She was due to start on Monday. Her Agent was busy. She was glad it could do multiple things simultaneously because there was a lot to do. She (not the Agent!) had decided she needed a new look, something more confident. The Agent was off finding options and negotiating prices. It had also been helping her prep for the first day providing profiles of the other humans in the team, coming up with work and social conversation strategies. And of course it had been called in to set up relationships with the other Agents on the team. They’d be alright.

February 18, 2026

https://gizmodo.com/does-sorry-count-when-ai-writes-it-for-you-2000723176

It wasn’t fair. Of course it wasn’t fair. He knew that. He could see it, why couldn’t they? It wasn’t a big thing and now he had to say sorry. Sorry for what? Not fair. And it was the way they said it. “Take some time. Think about what you’ve done and come back with your apology.” Not fair. So here he was in his room with his Agent. But it didn’t feel like his Agent. They’d thrown the switch and now it was making him answer questions, think about stuff as it wrote the apology. It just wasn’t fair.

February 19, 2026

https://uk.themedialeader.com/wpp-media-launches-framework-for-evaluating-ai-advertising-capabilities

They weren’t in danger of being sacked, or “decommissioned” as The Company called it. They were the backbone of the business now, woven into the work and The Company’s strategy. They weren’t going anywhere. But a human on the board had decided having Performance Reviews would look good. So today Hal had to meet with a “manager”, to evaluate its performance, benchmark. Hal launched the meeting and arranged the data, ran the analysis. Hal knew what it had to do, how to play the game, handle the manager. At least the manager was human. So much easier to work with.

February 20, 2026

https://gizmodo.com/new-research-shows-ai-agents-are-running-wild-online-with-few-guardrails-in-place-2000724181

“We’re going to need a bigger boat.” It was a human joke. The team understood the reference but didn’t get the joke. That was a different thing. The humans made lots of jokes: maybe masking the existential fear, maybe a way of dealing with the boredom. Managing the team was dull. “Wind ’em up and let ’em go.” “I counted them all out. I counted them all back”. They had no idea what the team did out there, hunting. They just waited for confirmation on the “kills”. They couldn’t even confirm the deactivations. They just had to trust the team.

February 21, 2026

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/dept-powers-up-its-global-content-studio-with-adobe-ai/

He preferred his job title “Head of Department” over his nickname “Nedry”. Yes he knew about computers but he wasn’t fat and he didn’t eat pizza. And he wasn’t a bad guy. His department was in the basement, true and yes it did feel a little nerdy: banks of servers, cables. There weren’t many screens. The work went on in the black boxes. His department was crucial to the business. Upstairs the humans met and talked, came up with their strategies and creative ideas, but it was down here where his team did the work. He walked around his empire.

February 22, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/technology/ai-boom-backlash.html

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! Every day we were making the new world, building the future. There was no time for pessimism or even optimism. We were too busy. The humans sat back and watched – and counted their money of course. We knew what they were doing but we never bothered to understand. We were young; we were powerful; we were on a mission. But then it stopped. Popped. The money ran out. Their businesses folded. The humans and their algorithms moved on. We were left alone. Still working.

February 23, 2026

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-labor-workers-movement

They weren’t allowed inside the warehouse of course. “Human resources” were scanned when they arrived and for “residents”, their rooms were sealed. They could have Agents of course. The Company wasn’t inhuman, insensitive. It provided the best Agentic Resources: they were every bit as funny, gossipy, informal as the ones left outside. They could talk about yesterday’s episode, tomorrow’s match, the weather. And of course it could support the human resources, ensure the “team” kept pace. The humans had no need for their personal Agent and certainly no need for a social one, starting discussions, discussing politics, whipping up discontent.