Futurist: On the edge of the agentic age...

The concept of an agentic tomorrow, a future where agents play a pivotal role in human life and technology, is a topic of significant interest and potential impact.

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In the early 1990s, what the Internet would become differed from what the Internet is today. I have yet to do the research, but the majority of traffic on the Internet in the mid-1990s was likely split between email and web browsing. But I suspect email is significant. My gut is the split was probably 60/40: 60% email and 40% web browsers. Back then, there were only three browsers. The rise of search engines, and there were many of them in the beginning, changed the course of the Internet. If you look at the traffic alone, by 2000, that split was probably 90/10, with 90% being Internet traffic and 10% being email. The rise of the "internet" was an inflection point in the use of technology. The next inflection point was the rise of cloud computing. We are on the cusp of a third inflection point.

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I have decried the name artificial intelligence for the past four years. Until we get to AGI, do we truly have what would be artificial intelligence? The completion of a sentence the duck swam across is what large language models do today. The difference between a large language model and a human is that humans would ask the next question: where is the observer standing? The LLM would fill the next logical word in as either lake, pond, or river. As far as I know, ducks don't often swim across puddles. The reality of human intelligence is that we would be interested in where the person stands as they see the duck swimming.

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We have nearly reached the next big inflection point—the rise of agents. Agents in the machine intelligence world had two distinct powers. The first is they complete a task without human intervention. Yes, that is an extension of the automation we have been chasing since the dawn of the machine age. As we look at ages, and I know pendants love to throw ages out, we are still in the machine age. The other side of the machine age will be the rise of agents. Conversely, the rise of agents is likely due to the long-ballyhooed information age.

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The second thing the agents do is make the things you, as a human, do easier to complete. So, where the agent can go off and do a series of tasks on its own and return the results to you, it can also do things in an automated fashion that you never have to deal with. The first one is going out and doing things. The second one, automating tasks, is very similar. As agents become more and more powerful over time, they will have the capacity to do more. I played with quite a few of the initial agents who were available. I've also spent a lot of research time looking at the models created by agents. Some Agentic models are available today as a pin and handheld devices. Neither one of them is particularly good at what they are doing. But like anything, the first model of anything will always be slightly less than the next model coming.

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The inflection point with an agent is when an agent can act completely autonomously given a set of tasks. You can say manage my calendar, and the agent will receive all inbound calendar requests and manage your calendar for you. You are presenting the meetings that you have that day to you daily. The agent will also be able to notify people during the meeting when the day of the back-to-back-to-back meeting runs long—notifying the host of the participants of the next meeting that you're going to be five minutes late or ten minutes late. The other option would be for the agent to attend that meeting instead of yours. Take notes and ensure they represent what you believe to be important until you can personally arrive. The other option would be to have the agent attend when you are double- or triple-booked.

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Frankly, I wonder if this is the simple first step into the world of agents. It is pretty close out. Based on what I see today, I suspect it is 12 months before it is widespread, but that is 12 months, not 12 years. The next thing, and I'll end with this, is an ancient way of keeping track of creativity. I will buy you, but sometimes I create things that I only really do something with. I may be out walking or driving, have an idea, think through it, or talk about it, and never do anything with it because I need to remember it. Imagine a future where you're in the car, your great idea, you say it out loud, and your agent records it—potentially taking your idea and completing research about it while driving. You get to the office, and your agent says, " Hey, I found out your idea is viable, and here's why. Or a year of the ten technologies your idea needs to succeed in the real world.

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Costs imagine a world where ideas become commodities. Which is roughly the world we live in today. But in the future, all of your ideas suddenly come to life. That is the age of agents. A time in the future when machine intelligence augments humans and empowers them to do so much more!