AI's Next Big Move: Agents that Think and Act for You
AI's Next Big Move: Agents that Think and Act for You
When your AI can book your holiday but can’t quite finish the checkout, are we witnessing progress or just expensive beta tests?
OpenAI’s “12 days of shipmas” and Google’s Gemini 2.0 launch hint at a future dominated by agentic AI, tools designed to act independently rather than merely chat.
While OpenAI’s Sora creates videos and Google’s Astra interprets visuals and performs browser tasks, glitches abound. Sora struggles with realistic animations, and Astra fails basic geography.
Yet, expectations are high: Salesforce’s Agentforce saw 200 clients in one week, and Microsoft is advancing similar tools, but there are quite a few issues to be solved:
- Data scarcity limits AI’s learning of complex tasks.
- Trust issues arise as agents handle sensitive information.
- High costs make AI agents a premium offering.
As AI transitions from “chatting to doing,” how much are we willing to pay for convenience and innovation? Will these AI agents redefine productivity or stumble under the weight of complexity and trust issues?
Read the full article on The Economist.
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Dr. Mark van Rijmenam
Dr. Mark van Rijmenam is The Digital Speaker, a world-leading futurist and global AI keynote speaker who helps leaders decide what AI, and the technologies that follow it, mean for their business. He speaks to leadership teams at their retreats and to conference audiences worldwide, and his WAVE framework gives them a way of deciding that they keep using long after he has left the room. His Intelligence Age Scorecard measures how ready an organization is across the four WAVE pillars.
He holds a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney, is a Certified Speaking Professional and Global Speaking Fellow, and ranks among the world’s top futurists on the Global Gurus list (#1 in 2025, #3 in 2026). Salesforce named him one of its 16 leading AI voices. He has written six books, most recently Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, writes the Synthetic Minds newsletter on Substack, and founded Futurwise. Talk to his digital twin on WhatsApp: +1 (830) 463-6967.
