--- title: Eunice is almost here | daily.dev description: William Gibson's 2020 novel Agency features Eunice, an AI assistant that talks while secretly acting in the background, like buying frequent flyer points on a... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/eunice-is-almost-here-8mowctjhn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Eunice is almost here | daily.dev og:description: William Gibson's 2020 novel Agency features Eunice, an AI assistant that talks while secretly acting in the background, like buying frequent flyer points on a... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/eunice-is-almost-here-8mowctjhn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/8MowCTJhN.png og:image:alt: Eunice is almost here og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Eunice is almost here **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 2 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary William Gibson's 2020 novel Agency features Eunice, an AI assistant that talks while secretly acting in the background, like buying frequent flyer points on a global market. The author compares the fiction to real tools like GPT-Live and Block's Dessa, which bring remarkably human-like full-duplex conversation. OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse are introducing 24/7 agents that pursue goals and act independently. The point: Eunice's defining trait wasn't speech but doing many things while speaking, and the pieces are coming together. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 70 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-26). **TL;DR:** The discussion barely engages with the AI-agent thesis itself, instead sprawling into tangents about Gibson's writing history, other predictive sci-fi, and a long meta-argument about sourcing and disinformation; where people do weigh in on the actual topic, reactions range from genuine excitement about agentic tools to dismissal and unease. **Sentiment:** 15% positive · 45% mixed · 40% skeptical **The case for** - One commenter described building a genuinely useful voice/photo-driven food-logging agent in minutes, calling it a real glimpse of the 'Eunice' future. - Some see Gibson as a remarkably accurate trend-spotter whose fiction keeps anticipating real technology. **The pushback** - Several argue people already avoid voice interaction (preferring text) and doubt broad adoption of talking AI agents. - Some express outright dread or disgust at the idea of this future being marketed as desirable. - One commenter dismisses the piece as thinly-veiled marketing copy for a particular AI company that ignores more advanced things already available. - A commenter questions whether 'vibecoded' quick builds can really be credited as something a person 'made' or 'wrote'. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Most of the thread drifts into tangents (Gibson biography, word processors, other sci-fi, an unrelated disinformation spat), with only scattered genuine reactions to the AI-agent premise split between enthusiasm and skepticism/dread. **Hottest debate:** Whether this kind of always-on, talking AI agent is something people actually want, versus a future to dread or dismiss as overhyped marketing. **Open questions** - Will people actually adopt voice-based AI agents given that many already prefer text over voice calls? - How much of the 'prediction' is genuine foresight versus science fiction shaping the very technology it describes? **Highlights** > Over the last four decades I've written several food logging apps for my own use. They've never been good enough to release, because I've always wanted more from them. But last week I made one in about a half hour that is by far the best I've ever written or used. I added a GrokBot, told it that it is my food logger, and to create a Google spreadsheet with the columns and sheets I need. After a couple of short iterations it was ready to go. Now to log anything I just prompt the bot with a little voice, text, or a photo of a meal, and it makes a (usually accurate) guess about what exactly I mean, looks up the nutrient stats, and logs it to the spreadsheet. To change any feature or refactor the spreadsheet I just describe the change and boom. Before LLMs this would have been magic for a sophisticated developer, now it's table stakes for the frontier AI vendors available to any muggle. This was Eunice slapping me in the face and shouting Wake Up! > — [delichon on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235882) > These days, I constantly find myself filled with a kind of techno-dysphoria, where not only do I not want to use the tech in the way it’s being packaged/sold, but I’m filled with dread and disgust by the idea of people who do so breathlessly anticipate and proselytize its arrival. The idea that anyone ever read a Gibson novel and thought, “can’t wait,” truly boggles my mind. > — [dimbletimbers on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237380) > I, for one, forbid my devices from speaking, for they have no right to speak in my holy tongue https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2054961-welcome-to-my-meme-p... > — [queenkjuul on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50238955) > It's been here all year, agentic AI is over a year old even in the mainstream. Real time TTS-SST can be better than Dessa, and with an actual brain and custom voice. this article is just a marketing copy for openAI right? Also it leaves out all the parts that are not publicly releasable from these mainstream companies that will finish the job, Limbic system, dream and reflection pipelines, brainstem, Self improvement and learning, continuity of state, stable memory vectors across time and the ability to tell dreams from memory, I could go on. I wish people would explore what's already out there to play with instead of gushing at the crumbs openAI throws the plebs. > — [jubilee33 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50239069) > I don't know about this guys, we used to have phones and as soon as we had the chance to use text messages instead we went all in on them. I personally, and many of the people I know avoid voice calls as much as possible. So if I can't really be bothered to speak with other humans, why would I want to speak out loud with an AI? I may be wrong and soon we'll all have Jarvises, HALs and Samanthas but not sure the adoption will be as fast and broad as these companies want to makes us believe. > — [lgl on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237013) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235316) · 71 points · 70 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Agents Over Bubbles](https://daily.dev/posts/agents-over-bubbles-n7fscaxsf) · Justin Searls · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [OpenAI launches dots, always-on AI agents with their own cloud computers](https://daily.dev/posts/openai-launches-dots-always-on-ai-agents-with-their-own-cloud-computers-ci9onynya) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Artificial Intelligence as a Consumer Service](https://daily.dev/posts/artificial-intelligence-as-a-consumer-service-cpptdaapy) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/eunice-is-almost-here-8mowctjhn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Eunice is almost here","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/eunice-is-almost-here-8mowctjhn","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/eunice-is-almost-here-8mowctjhn"},"datePublished":"2026-10-25T21:41:44.493Z","dateModified":"2026-10-26T04:27:44.107Z","description":"William Gibson's 2020 novel Agency features Eunice, an AI assistant that talks while secretly acting in the background, like buying frequent flyer points on a...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--qPvKM23u--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2009","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--qPvKM23u--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2009","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/eunice-is-almost-here-8mowctjhn","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai-agents","timeRequired":"PT2M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Eunice is almost here"}]} ```