Agentive Amplifier

A framing of technical artefacts, proposed by Oosterlaken and Van Den Hoven, as things that create possibilities a person would not otherwise have — extending, not replacing, the user's own agency. Under this view the ethical significance of a technology is judged by how it expands or constrains what a person can do given their particular conversion factors, rather than by autonomous capability of the technology itself. For assistive technology design, the concept provides a vocabulary for preserving user authorship and control when integrating powerful automation such as AI, adaptive mappings, or semi-autonomous assistive robots.