If there’s one thing true about this moment in technology history, it’s that as soon as you think you’re keeping pace with the cutting edge of AI (poof!), the lead moves.
This is a perennial anxiety, but I’ve never heard tech experts talk about it so much. It came up constantly as we spoke to CEOs, founders, investors, and analysts as we prepared this special issue on the new era of autonomy.
“Every two months, we see such massive changes that it’s impossible to predict what will happen and on what timeline. We’re planning from the seat of our pants.” —Neel Ajjarapu, Product Lead for Commerce, OpenAI
“While Moore’s law doubled computing power every two years, the time horizon law doubles cognitive reach every four months.” —Azeem Azhar, founder of Exponential View, on a useful way to look at the rapid evolution of AI agents.
“AI is advancing so quickly that the state of the art changes every three months.” —Sonya Huang, Partner, Sequoia Capital
Because the printed edition of fast company comes out quarterly, we have an advantage: we are forced to take a broader view and do what fast company what he does best is look around corners. Turns out there’s a lot to see.
Our cover subject, Fei-Fei Li, a well-known name in AI circles, is building his startup on world models, a newer type of artificial intelligence beyond large language models (LLM). Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is taking a victory lap toward profitability as he prepares for the existential threat (and opportunities) posed by autonomous vehicles. And as senior writer Liz Segran learned when she asked robots to find her the perfect dress, agent shopping has huge potential, but a long way to go.
Those stories will prepare you for the next wave of AI, and maybe the one after that.
In the meantime, there’s plenty in this issue to get you ready now: a summary of all the agent AI tools and resources you should already be using, by global technology editor Harry McCracken; an essay by Azhar, an AI power user who could also be a canary in the coal mine; and our third annual AI 20, a list of humans driving this technology.
If there’s one other thing that’s true about this fast-moving time in technology, it’s that there will always be a tool that’s slightly better (or slightly worse) than the one you’re using. What matters is the framework your company adopts to help you make decisions about which tools to adopt, how to integrate them into workflows, and how to move on to something new when the time is right.
“The real challenge is not just technical, but organizational,” says Shiv Rao, CEO of Abridge, an artificial intelligence platform that automates clinical note-taking and documentation for doctors. Sounds like a recipe for business leaders everywhere.
*At least a little bit.