Does AI Remove Or Provide User Agency?

On a recent episode of our other podcast, Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike was joined by guest host Konstantinos Komaitis for a far-reaching discussion about online speech. One point that was briefly raised in that discussion was the question of whether AI tools are good or bad for user agency, and since Mike and Konstantinos didn't entirely agree, it seemed like a good question to unpack in more detail — and that's exactly what they do on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast. Ctrl-Alt-Speech Episode: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/01/29/ctrl-alt-speech-think-globally-stack-locally/