The Agency Economy isn't a future state. It's here. And its leaders won't be those who build the best AI. They'll be those who best amplify human potential. That's what our brand stands for. Not artificial intelligence. Augmented humanity. Because in the end, it's not about better machines. It's about better humans.

We're living through the most dramatic intelligence explosion in history, and as Tim Urban's 2025 update shows, we're about to witness AI leap from "cute party tricks" to "what the hell just happened?" The gap between where we are and where AI is heading isn't measured in decades—it's measured in moments. While we're still marveling at today's AI doing "monkey tricks," tomorrow's superintelligence will make Einstein look like a chimp.

Jensen Huang revealed the three scaling laws that will reshape everything: pre-training gave us ChatGPT, post-training made it useful, but test-time scaling lets AI think for hours like a human expert. When machines can reason as long and hard as we can, we're not just getting better AI—we're getting AI that outthinks us at our own game.

Jensen Huang's roadmap shows we're about to leap from AI that creates content to AI that takes action in the real world. We're living in the final months of "AI as a tool"—by the end of 2025, agentic AI will handle your customer service, code your software, and manage your healthcare. The jump to physical AI means robots won't just think like humans, they'll work alongside us everywhere.‍

While computer chips doubled in power every two years under Moore's Law, AI is improving 4x faster every single year under Jensen's Law—that's a million-fold leap in a decade versus just a thousand-fold. Your smartphone got incrementally better each year, but AI is making exponential jumps that will transform entire industries. The differentiation you think you have today could be obsolete by next year.

AI has already surpassed humans in nearly every technical task—from coding to language translation to PhD-level science—but we still hold the edge in one critical area: multimodal understanding and reasoning that combines charts, images, and complex context. This isn't just about being "better than humans" anymore; it's about the final frontier where human intuition still matters. The question is: how long will this last advantage define your competitive edge?

We've reached the moment where AI models are scoring higher than 98% of humans on IQ tests. While the average human IQ sits at 100, leading AI systems are breaking into genius-level territory at 140+, with future models like GPT-5 potentially pushing even higher. The cognitive gap isn't widening gradually; it's exploding in real-time, and most people don't understand that race is over. (Caveats: 1) There is obviously more to human intelligence to than raw IQ;
2) The AI labs excel at training their products to perform well on these types of standardized tests.

In just the past year, OpenAI leaped from barely passing graduate-level exams to crushing PhD experts, with OpenAI's latest models scoring 84% versus 68% for human PhDs on the toughest scientific questions. We're watching decades of human expertise get surpassed in real-time—what took humanity generations to master, AI now learns in months. The question isn't whether AI will replace experts, but how quickly your industry will be transformed.

This shows the breakdown of Humanity's Last Exam's 2,500 questions—42% mathematics, 11% each for physics and biology/medicine, with smaller portions covering engineering, chemistry, and other expert domains. This is an effort to create the most comprehensive test of expert knowledge ever assembled. Just a few months ago, the world's smartest AI models could only answer <10% of these questions correctly, now they are at 26% and experts believe this benchmark will be eclipsed by year's end.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon revealed the new reality of professional work: AI now handles 95% of what used to take teams of bankers weeks to complete, turning complex financial documents into commodity work done in minutes. The last 5% of human insight, relationships, and strategic thinking has become infinitely more valuable because everything else is now automated. Our competitive advantage today isn't about working harder—it's about competing on the work that machines can't replicate. Sometime it will be 5% like in this example. And at other times, it will be much more. We have to determine what can AI do, and what can it not?

When it comes to how we use AI, we're a little trapped in transactional thinking. Imagine giving people the Human Agency required to create value when Intelligence is abundant. Today's AI applications are embarrassingly small—basic automation and efficiency gains—while the most transformative opportunities remain completely unexplored, as Peter Gostev reveals. We could be reimagining entire industries around superintelligent systems. The biggest competitive advantage won't come from optimizing current workflows, but from having the imagination to envision what becomes possible when intelligence is no longer the constraint.

Most higher education institutions are stuck at the bottom of the AI pyramid, automating basic tasks and celebrating small efficiency gains while the real transformation happens at the top. The universities that will thrive aren't just using AI to grade papers or schedule classes—they're pioneering entirely new interdisciplinary programs, forging revenue-generating AI partnerships, and becoming intellectual leaders in the age of Abundant Intelligence. The question isn't whether your institution uses AI, but whether you're building toward visionary innovation or settling for individual improvements.

When it comes to AI, there are two types of organizations: those who see what's coming and those who wonder what hit them. Situational awareness isn't just about watching—it's about understanding the signals that matter while there's still time to act. Don't predict the future. Prepare for it.

Notice the pattern? Every major player is racing toward the same vision: AI that sees, understands, reasons, and acts. But each brings a unique strength. Together, they're not just improving AI—they're redefining what's possible in human-AI collaboration. The future of AI isn't coming. It's arriving.

Most organizations plan for a single AI future. That's like betting everything on one number in roulette. Smart leaders prepare for all four scenarios: breakthrough, growth, steady progress, or plateau. Because the cost of being wrong is far higher than the cost of being ready. Tomorrow's success depends on today's scenario planning.

Three panels tell one powerful story: widespread impact (80%), deep transformation (>50% of tasks in 20% of jobs), and the emergence of a new work hierarchy. The key isn't in the numbers, but in the nature of change. AI isn't just taking tasks—it's elevating human work, creating new categories of value where technology and humanity amplify each other. AI doesn't end jobs. It evolves them.

From steam engines to quantum computing, each revolution demanded new skills. But look closely at the pattern: we're not just adding complexity—we're shifting from physical to digital to human-AI fusion. The next leap isn't just about learning new tools; it's about reimagining what it means to be human in the age of AI. The next leap isn't about technology. It's about us.

While everyone obsesses over technical AI skills, the real competitive advantage lies in developing the uniquely human capabilities that become exponentially more valuable in an AI-driven world. Our framework reveals the skills that will separate thriving professionals from obsolete ones: complex problem-solving, emotional intelligence, visionary thinking, and the ability to orchestrate both humans and machines toward ambitious goals. The question isn't whether your organization uses AI—it's whether you're intentionally developing the human skills that make AI partnership transformative rather than replaceable.

In an age where AI can do almost everything, your purpose lies at the intersection of what energizes you, where you create real impact, how you stand out economically, and what only you as a human can contribute. This isn't traditional career planning—it's IkigAI, finding your irreplaceable role in a world of Abundant Intelligence. The most fulfilled and valuable professionals won't be those who compete with AI, but those who discover their unique human edge where passion, mission, contribution, and differentiation converge.

The traditional career ladder is broken, leaving graduates staring up at a pathway to success that no longer exists in the age of AI. While previous generations could climb predictable rungs from entry-level to executive roles, today's graduates face a fragmented landscape where entire job categories disappear overnight and new ones emerge without warning. The winners won't be those who try to fix the old ladder, but those bold enough to build entirely new pathways to success in the era of Abundant Intelligence.

The AI job apocalypse isn't coming for recent graduates—it's already here, as companies discover they can replace entry-level knowledge workers with AI systems that work 24/7 without benefits or training periods. Traditional career entry points are vanishing faster than higher ed can adapt their curricula, leaving new graduates competing not just with each other but with algorithms that never sleep. The stark reality: if your first job can be done by today's AI, you need to leapfrog directly to roles that require uniquely human capabilities—or risk being permanently displaced before your career even begins.

The career ladder that built the middle class is collapsing in real-time, as AI eliminates the knowledge work rungs that once provided predictable advancement from entry-level to management roles. Traditional middle management—the coordination, analysis, and decision-making that formed the backbone of corporate hierarchies—is being automated away faster than companies can retrain their workforce. Today's professionals aren't just competing for promotions; they're staring at a fundamentally restructured economy where the path from worker to leader has been permanently altered by Abundant Intelligence.

The AI displacement wave isn't coming gradually—it's hitting specific job categories first, and we now have a clear roadmap of which roles will disappear in 2025 versus which will survive until 2030. While everyone debates whether AI will replace humans, smart professionals are studying exactly which tasks within their industry are most vulnerable and repositioning themselves accordingly. The question isn't whether your job will be affected, but whether you're preparing for the specific ways AI will reshape your field before your competitors figure it out.

This isn't theoretical disruption—AI has already eliminated 76,440 jobs in 2025 alone, with tech giants like Microsoft, IBM, and Google leading massive layoffs as algorithms replace human workers. The data reveals a stark pattern: companies are quietly swapping knowledge workers for AI systems that deliver the same output at a fraction of the cost. While politicians debate the future impact of AI, the job market transformation is happening right now, one eliminated position at a time, and the pace is accelerating faster than anyone predicted.

The white-collar bloodbath is no longer a prediction—it's front-page news, with CEOs openly warning that AI could eliminate half of all knowledge jobs within five years. While we debate AI ethics in boardrooms, Claude 4 is already working autonomously for seven hours straight, refactoring code that used to require entire development teams. The "delete" keys aren't just on keyboards anymore—they're erasing entire categories of professional work faster than workers can retrain for what comes next.

The era of "AI-first companies" has arrived, where CEOs are flipping the script: instead of justifying why they need AI, employees must now prove their work can't be automated before companies will hire more humans. From Shopify requiring proof of non-AI-replaceable work to Fiverr's CEO warning that AI is "definitely taking your job," major platforms are openly restructuring around artificial intelligence as the primary workforce. This isn't gradual adoption—it's a fundamental business model shift where human workers become the exception that needs justification, not the default assumption.

Welcome to the Agency Economy—a fundamental restructuring of work where value is created through the dynamic intersection of human agency, agentic AI systems, and applied expertise rather than traditional employment models. This isn't just the future of work; it's the emergence of an entirely new economic system where humans and AI agents collaborate as partners, each contributing their unique capabilities to solve complex problems. The winners in this economy won't be those who resist change, but those who master the art of orchestrating human creativity, AI capability, and domain expertise into powerful value-creation engines.

When intelligence becomes truly abundant, the question shifts from "how can AI help me work faster?" to "what impossible dreams become possible when cognitive capacity is infinite?" This isn't about optimizing your current workflow—it's about reimagining what you'd attempt if you had a genius-level partner available 24/7 to tackle any intellectual challenge. The most successful people in the Agency Economy won't be those who use AI to do their existing jobs better, but those bold enough to pursue endeavors that were previously unthinkable for a single human mind.

Stanford's leading AI researcher Fei-Fei Li cuts through the hype with a profound truth: there's nothing "artificial" about artificial intelligence—it's the most human technology ever created, designed by humans to mirror human behavior and fundamentally reshape human society. This is about humans building tools that reflect our values, biases, and aspirations, making every AI system a mirror of its creators. The future of AI isn't determined by algorithms alone, but by the human choices we make today about how these systems should think, act, and impact the world we share.

The Peter Principle—where people rise to their level of incompetence—is colliding with AI disruption to create a perfect storm of workplace chaos. Traditional hierarchies promoted people based on past performance until they reached roles they couldn't handle, but now AI is eliminating entire layers of that career ladder before workers can even climb it. The professionals frantically trying to ascend the old corporate structure are discovering that the rungs they're reaching for are disappearing faster than they can grab them, making competence at any level irrelevant when the positions themselves vanish.

The Bernstein Principle is the new Peter Principle: we're blindly assuming that everyone can transition from doing work to orchestrating AI agents, but most people will reach their level of incompetence trying to manage, coach, and conduct swarms of artificial intelligence. Just as the original Peter Principle promoted people into management roles they couldn't handle, we're now expecting every worker to become an AI conductor—a skill set that requires entirely different capabilities than their current expertise. The uncomfortable truth is that directing AI systems is its own form of complex work, and most professionals will struggle to master the art of human-AI orchestration, creating a new layer of workplace incompetence.

Human agency isn't a single skill—it's a complex ecosystem of interconnected capabilities that root us in personal direction, ethical execution, and our role as human edge catalysts in the AI age. While we obsess over technical AI skills, this framework reveals the deeper truth: thriving in the Agency Economy requires cultivating everything from creative intelligence and ethical compass to embodied cognition and narrative identity. The professionals who master this full spectrum of human agency won't just survive AI disruption—they'll become the irreplaceable orchestrators who give meaning, direction, and wisdom to our increasingly automated world.

The DNA of the Agency Economy reveals itself as three interconnected strands: human agency (self-efficacy, intentionality, resilient well-being, ethical compass) twisted together with agentic AI capabilities (prompt design, guard-rail design, drift direction, continuous optimization) and applied expertise (domain knowledge, data fluency, workflow design, policy compliance). Just like biological DNA, removing any one strand causes the entire structure to collapse—you can't build sustainable value with AI skills alone, human skills alone, or domain expertise alone. The future belongs to professionals who understand that thriving in the Agency Economy requires mastering this complete triple helix of capabilities, where human wisdom guides AI power through expert application.

Agentic Workflow Design transforms from abstract concept to practical reality in three simple steps: form your team, pick your AI tool, and define your KPI-driven workflow with structured prompts that turn AI into specialized organizational agents. This isn't just using ChatGPT for individual tasks—it's architecting AI systems that act as domain-specific workflow designers, like a "Campus Conductor-GPT" that can instantly generate high-impact processes tied to measurable outcomes. The magic happens when you move beyond asking AI to help with your work and start designing AI agents that redesign how work gets done entirely.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella offers a fundamentally different vision of the AI future: rather than replacing our most human qualities, AI will become the ultimate amplifier of creativity, empathy, and judgment—liberating us to cultivate our creative spirit at unprecedented scales. This isn't about competing with machines or fearing obsolescence; it's about partnering with AI to become more human, not less, by freeing ourselves from routine cognitive tasks to focus on what makes us uniquely valuable. The leaders who embrace this amplification mindset won't just survive the AI revolution—they'll use it to unlock human potential we never knew existed.

Paul Daugherty cuts through the AI hype with a simple but revolutionary insight: the organizations that win in the age of Abundant Intelligence won't be those with the best technology, but those that invest most heavily in developing their people's capacity to work alongside AI. While competitors frantically chase the latest AI tools and models, the smartest leaders are focusing on human capabilities—creativity, judgment, emotional intelligence, and agentic workflow design skills that determine whether AI becomes a force multiplier or an expensive disappointment. Technology is becoming commoditized, but human potential amplified by AI remains the ultimate competitive advantage.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai places AI in the pantheon of humanity's greatest discoveries, calling it more transformative than fire, electricity, or any technology in human history—a statement that reframes our entire understanding of what we're living through. This isn't just another tech upgrade or business trend; according to one of the world's most influential technology leaders, we're witnessing a civilizational inflection point that will reshape human existence more fundamentally than the discoveries that brought us out of caves and into the modern world. When the CEO of the company that essentially created the internet calls AI more profound than electricity, we're not just adapting to change—we're participating in the next chapter of human evolution.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman delivers the ultimate challenge for our AI future: the winners won't be those who extract the most profit from artificial intelligence, but those who figure out how to make AI genuinely serve human flourishing and potential. This isn't just about corporate social responsibility—it's about recognizing that the most sustainable competitive advantage comes from creating AI systems that amplify human agency rather than diminish it. The future belongs to leaders who understand that true AI success isn't measured in cost savings or automation metrics, but in how well we use Abundant Intelligence to unlock human creativity, purpose, and well-being at unprecedented scale.

AI pioneer Andrew Ng identifies the new scarcity in the age of Abundant Intelligence: while powerful AI models are becoming commoditized and accessible to everyone, the ability to orchestrate them into reliable agentic workflows remains incredibly rare. The competitive advantage no longer comes from having access to the best AI—it comes from mastering the art of stitching together evaluations, memory systems, retrieval-augmented generation, guardrails, and orchestration into workflows that actually work in the real world. Train or hire for agentic workflow design skills first, because that's where the true value creation happens when intelligence becomes abundant but wisdom remains scarce.

This is the ultimate vision: HumanAI isn't about choosing between humans or artificial intelligence—it's about scaling your human potential through the strategic integration of purpose, agency, and skills in the age of Abundant Intelligence. When you combine a clear sense of purpose with developed human agency and the right collaborative skills, AI becomes the ultimate amplifier of what makes you uniquely valuable rather than a threat to your relevance. The future doesn't belong to humans or AI alone, but to those who master the art of HumanAI collaboration, using technology to become more human, more creative, and more impactful than ever before.

London Business School's Andrew J. Scott captures the essence of our entire journey in one profound insight: the better AI becomes at mechanical tasks, the more valuable our uniquely human qualities become—creativity, empathy, judgment, purpose, and agency. This isn't a competition between humans and machines; it's an evolution where artificial intelligence pushes us to develop our most human capacities more intentionally than ever before. The winners in the age of Abundant Intelligence won't be those who try to out-compute the machines, but those who become more human, more creative, more empathetic, and more purposeful in response to living alongside artificial intelligence.