I think the trouble is that the headline is ambiguous and may confuse people about the theme of the article, although if you'd simply apply common sense, you could reason out that the author can't realistically ask for "fewer AI agents".
A hyphenation would assist in comprehension, in this and many other cases. However, while editing Wikipedia, I found that the manuals of style and editor preferences are anti-hyphenation -- I'm sorry, anti hyphenation, in a lot of cases!
Some more verbosity would've helped, e.g. "I want AI agents to be less human" but as always, headlines use an economy of words.
Oh I understood the aside was for me. Again, not a thing. This one in particular really bugs the shit out of me because it's brought up as utterly useless pedantry in 100% of cases.
> But for more than 200 years almost every usage writer and English teacher has declared such use to be wrong. The received rule seems to have originated with the critic Robert Baker, who expressed it not as a law but as a matter of personal preference. Somewhere along the way—it's not clear how—his preference was generalized and elevated to an absolute, inviolable rule. . . . A definitive rule covering all possibilities is maybe impossible. If you're a native speaker your best bet is to be guided by your ear, choosing the word that sounds more natural in a particular context. If you're not a native speaker, the simple rule is a good place to start, but be sure to consider the exceptions to it as well.
I'm fond of linguistic bugbears, and have actually sent that same article to people before :D But what you're missing is that the less/fewer debate is over their use as adjectives, and TFA's title uses "less" as an adverb. It's asking for AI agents to be less human, not for them to be fewer in number. Swapping it to "fewer" would make the title's meaning no longer match the article.
Now please sit a moment and reflect on what you've done. :P
