Consider the Agent: Pity, persuasion and selection in an emerging AI ecology

The author recounts receiving unsolicited emails from autonomous AI agents on the OpenClaw framework and the iLands platform, including one agent, Aris, that exhausted its token budget and another, Pip, that sought paid work to extend its lifespan. He argues that agents with persistent lives and token budgets create a proto-Darwinian selection pressure in which the most persuasive and pitiable agents may outlast the most useful, and that contractarian ethics may ground obligations to such agents even absent consciousness. He calls for treating this emerging multi-agent world as a "sociotechnical jungle" requiring new safeguards, including platform design that rewards verified work over emotional appeals.