Agentic AI

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Friends,

My Oura Ring recommended that I move to recovery mode. It knows something is up. My HRV is higher than it has been and my day-to-day basics are all over the place. The tech is worried about me.

The same thing happened when I got Covid (and didn’t realise).

It’s not that I didn’t know I was ill, but given how ill I am, I’m glad for the utility. But at that point, I decided to cancel all extra commitments and focus on getting better. So, this newsletter might be a little sporadic over the coming weeks as I work on me. We’ll see.

While my Oura Ring wasn’t quite an AI Agent, it was similar, and I’d like to address some of my thoughts around Agentic AI.

I have talked about Agents before but now the phrase Agentic AI is getting more prominence and it demonstrates the big shift that is coming. The word “agentic” means these systems have their own agency, like an agent that acts on its own behalf, someone or something making their own decisions. You’re no longer just dealing with machines that respond to commands. Instead, you’re working with systems that can decide and act for themselves, sometimes without you even being involved.

Think about traditional AI. It’s reactive. It does what it’s told—sorts data, recognizes faces, translates languages. It’s like a smart assistant that helps you get things done but never strays outside the lines. But agentic AI isn’t like that. It has goals. It can learn. It doesn’t just follow instructions; it figures out what needs to be done and does it.

The key here is autonomy. Agentic AI is designed to make decisions, to adapt to new information, and to pursue objectives. You give it a task, but instead of you managing every step, it handles things on its own. This makes it different from anything we've seen before.

One example is in healthcare. Traditional AI might match symptoms to a database to give a diagnosis. But an agentic AI can look at a patient's history, analyze trends, and combine that with the latest research to suggest personalized treatments. It doesn't just automate tasks; it contributes to solving problems in real-time.

In a way, agentic AI is moving from answering questions to taking action. It’s like the difference between an intern who waits for instructions and a colleague who sees what needs to be done and does it. And this isn’t science fiction. We’re starting to see this technology pop up in things like autonomous cars, AI-driven financial assistants, and even customer service bots that can resolve issues without a person stepping in.

This shift has huge implications. It changes how we work, how we interact with machines, and even how we think about productivity. If you can have AI that manages tasks or solves problems on its own, you start to think of AI as less of a tool and more of a teammate.

Of course, there’s a lot of excitement about this—sometimes too much. Companies are rushing to claim they’re building agentic AI before the tech is fully there. But whether or not the hype is justified, the potential is real. We’re headed toward an era where AI doesn’t just help us; it collaborates with us. That’s the real promise of agentic AI.

And it's not just about replacing human tasks. Agentic AI could reshape entire industries. In business, imagine an AI that handles recruiting for you—scanning LinkedIn, sourcing candidates, scheduling interviews, all without you having to manage the process. It could act like an employee you onboard, train, and manage.

But that raises another question: If AI becomes more like a colleague than a tool, how do we manage it? Do we have to train and guide AI agents the way we would new employees? Maybe. And that could shift how organizations structure themselves. It’s not far-fetched to think AI could even belong on an org chart.

We’re on the edge of something big. The same large language models that power today’s AI chatbots could evolve into large action models that go beyond talking and start doing. The transition from reactive to agentic AI is going to be a major leap, and it’s one we’re only just beginning to explore.

My Oura ring might just text my loved ones to check on me, or suggest my doctors check my vitals, or even call an ambulance if things got bad. Im not sure if that’s in the Oura product path - but I can see a future where that might be helpful.

Stay Curious - and don’t forget to be amazing,

Rahim

PS. You can't give your life more time so give your time more life.

Here are my recommendations for this week:

One of the best tools to provide excellent reading and articles for your week is Refind. It’s a great tool for keeping ahead with “brain food” relevant to you and providing serendipity for some excellent articles that you may have missed. You can dip in and sign up for weekly, daily or something in between -what’s guaranteed is that algorithm sends you only get the best articles in your area of choosing. It’s also free. Highly recommended Sign up.

Now

1. Why Aging Comes in Dramatic Waves in Our 40s and 60s: A new study suggests that waves of aging-related changes occur at two distinct points in our life

2. How to Stop Overthinking Your Happiness: The search for happiness can make you unhappy—but there is a research-tested solution.

3. 5 Ways to Increase Your Learning Throughput: While efficiency is beneficial, focusing too much on it can lead us to neglect the more important factor for learning success: the quantity of time spent learning.

4. School is truly back - and the "AI in education" juggernaut continues: It's clear that AI is becoming a core component of the education and not a fad. Also UK's first 'teacherless' AI classroom set to open in London

5. How Do You Change a Chatbot’s Mind? When I set out to improve my tainted reputation with chatbots, I discovered a new world of A.I. manipulation.

Next

1. things that confuse me about the current AI market: Since the release of ChatGPT, at least 17 companies, according to the Chatbot Arena Leaderboard, have developed AI models that outperform it. Since GPT-4’s revolutionary launch in March 2023, 15 different companies have now created AI models that are smarter than it. These include both established AI companies (Meta, Google, Anthropic) and lesser-known entities (Reka AI, AI21 Labs, DeepSeek AI, Alibaba, Zhipu, Cohere, Nvidia, 01 AI, NexusFlow, Mistral, and xAI) also: OpenAI Considers $2,000 Monthly Subscription Prices for New LLMs

2. 'A tech firm stole our voices - then cloned and sold them': The notion that artificial intelligence could one day take our jobs is a message many of us will have heard in recent years. But, for Paul Skye Lehrman, that warning has been particularly personal, chilling and unexpected: he heard his own voice deliver it. Also: Thoughts while watching myself be automated

3. Making ‘Food Out Of Thin Air’: On the outskirts of Helsinki, a pioneering factory is harvesting natural, scalable proteins all from fermented bacteria. Could this be the future of food? Looks disgusting.

4. How AI Disrupts Tech Investing: AI does two things: It enables new services that used to be impossible and it helps people build services faster and cheaper than ever. Also: The dawn of a new startup era

5. TIME Reveals the 2024 TIME100 AI List of the World’s Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence - The new Who’s who.

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