Estonia plans government IDs giving AI agents rights and responsibilities
There’s no shortage of agentic AI tools out there that offer to perform online tasks on your behalf, if only you’ll give them all your passwords and credit card details. The trouble starts when those agents don’t know when to stop — or when others don’t know to stop them. In Estonia, the country’s AI Council has plans to change that, proposing to issue government-backed digital identities for AI agents that spell out what powers a person or company is willing to delegate to them. “In the future, AI will increasingly perform digital operations on behalf of a person, company, or institution,” said Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal in a news release. “To do this, it must be clear who is acting, on whose behalf, with what rights, and who is responsible.” He supported the AI Council’s proposal to create a digital identity for AI agents that will define agents’ rights and enable them to act in a verifiable and auditable manner. The ID could, the council suggests, show whether an agent i