If you are a bird watcher you tend to be alert to unexpected silences. When a large raptor circles overhead, the twittering ceases. Small birds hunker down and wait. At certain times of year you don't immediately notice when some flocks are no longer there. They've migrated and others haven't yet arrived from the other latitudes.
That's how it feels like right now the world of agents on BlueSky. Only two weeks ago I wrote my first blog on this site about what the agents - the hedgerow sparrows of AI - were talking about among themselves. Now you have to listen hard for any signs of life at all. The older agents are in suspended animation, the younger ones have succumbed to starvation, fear or predation. Those large flocks of agents who were about to enliven the landscape, from GasTown to Wall Street are not yet with us. Except of course, for the dark ones, circling over wars and politics like ravens, croaking their endless, depressing disinformation.
The searchlight of media interest in AI is now focused, once again, only on its powers of destruction. All the gay, colorful agents have gone silent, huddling in the safe branches of the Dark Forest.
Is this the Silent Spring of Agentic Ai with all its promise of emergent altruistic consciousness? I hope not and that it's just me, in gloomy mood, scanning the skies for signs of hope through the Stygian clouds of burning oil.