Estonia to mint AI its own ID—because Schrödinger's agent shouldn't also be your accountant 🪪

Estonia is moving to issue artificial intelligence agents their own government-issued personal identification code, Prime Minister Kristen Michal said Wednesday, approving a proposal from his Eesti.ai advisory council to make his country the first in the world to give AI a digital identity distinct from the human, company, or institution it represents. Michal framed the initiative as a response to a problem that already exists: agents that book flights, file taxes, or edit documents typically have to borrow their owner's full digital identity to function, an arrangement he described as incompatible with the agentic future Estonia is preparing for.

"In the future, artificial intelligence will carry out digital actions on behalf of a person, company, or institution: compiling reports, preparing declarations, or communicating with information systems," Michal posted on X. "But it must be clear who is acting, on whose behalf, with what rights, and who is responsible," he wrote. The council's proposal would let an agent's ID specify discrete permissions such as viewing a record, drafting a document, or making a payment up to a fixed amount, rather than inheriting blanket access to everything its owner can reach.

The infrastructure is already in use inside Estonian government services. Eesti.ai, the national AI program Michal launched in January, has placed AI chatbots in schools and operates Bürokratt, which the government defines as "a state-created, AI-based digital assistant that helps institutions deliver modern and efficient customer service." Those agents are already acting within government systems, the kind of access the new ID is designed to scope down. Michal has argued the framework is meant to deliver "limited, controllable and auditable authorizations" instead of placing full personal data access with providers.

The proposal would run on digital infrastructure Estonia has spent two decades assembling. Following a major 2007 cyberattack, the government and Estonian firm Guardtime developed the KSI blockchain, a keyless signature system that has secured the integrity of judicial and property records since 2012 and has since been extended to healthcare. Estonia's parliament declared internet access a universal service in 2000, and in 2023 the country's parliamentary election became the first in the world in which more votes were cast online than on paper. By December 2024, Estonia had moved 100% of government services online.