Agency Decay and the Risk of AI's Asymptomatic Harms
Psychology Today | 12.02.2026 22:10Artificial intelligence (AI) does not take away human agency. And agency does not vanish in one dramatic moment. More often, it dissolves—gradually, politely, and with measurable gains along the way. That’s what makes the newest wave of AI risk harder to govern: Many harms arrive asymptomatically. Performance metrics go up. Output accelerates. Errors may drop. Yet the worker’s capacity to think, judge, and recover from stress quietly thins out.
