The Future of Agents is Perhaps There is No Agent: Towards a Field-Centric AI Paradigm

The agent-centric paradigm dominates current AI research and engineering, envisioning intelligence as collections of autonomous entities that reason, plan, and collaborate. However, this approach leads to escalating complexity in orchestration, state management, and security risks. To mitigate that, we propose a field-centric paradigm which we call “Aether Field”, where agents do not exist as persistent entities. Instead, intelligence emerges as transient surges within a unified field. The “Aether Portal” serves as the human interface, itself also a transient surge. This shift, inspired by quantum field theory, offers a possible alternative to the dominant paradigm. We discuss the paradigm’s foundations, architecture, and implications, concluding with open questions and a prototype sketch.