Big Tech is preparing to spend $650 billion on AI infrastructure this year, a figure that rivals national economies. The focus is agentic AI, systems designed not just to generate answers but to execute tasks independently.

The vision is software that can read your messages, access your calendar, contact your friends, move money and complete transactions without step by step supervision. In effect, technology that can act in the world on your behalf.

To function, these systems require sweeping access to personal and corporate data. Critics warn this amounts to asking users to “put your brain in a jar.”

What exactly is being built and who bears the risk?

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