The result could be a great concentration of wealth, and "it could become difficult for a substantial part of the population to really contribute," Amodei told us. "And that's really bad. We don't want that. The balance of power of democracy is premised on the average person having leverage through creating economic value. If that's not present, I think things become kind of scary. Inequality becomes scary. And I'm worried about it."

The big picture: Virtual employees could be the next AI innovation hotbed, Jason Clinton, the company's chief information security officer, told Axios.

• Agents typically focus on a specific, programmable task. In security, that's meant having autonomous agents respond to phishing alerts and other threat indicators.
• Virtual employees would take that automation a step further: These AI identities would have their own "memories," their own roles in the company and even their own corporate accounts and passwords.
• They would have a level of autonomy that far exceeds what agents have today.
• "In that world, there are so many problems that we haven't solved yet from a security perspective that we need to solve," Clinton said.