#autonomous-agents

#autonomous-agents

We're still in the earliest days of artificial intelligence. It was just November 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT, and the world changed. However, enough time has passed for us to have a sufficient perspective to categorize AI and autonomous agents into three distinct eras. Introduction-2024: In the initial shockwave, there was more novelty and hype than practicality around the possibilities of AI. Businesses and leaders understandably struggled to understand what was barreling toward them.

Will Critchlow catches up with Mike King, founder and CEO at iPullRank to talk about GEO, fanout queries, agents, and what the cutting edge feels like at a top agency. Mike and Will go way back, so this episode covers a lot of ground, from SEO to Mike's view on the place of AI in the production of art. This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.

"I do think [agentic] changes everything," says LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe on this week's episode of AdExchanger Talks. "But I'm not a big subscriber of, 'Hey, we're all going to buy agentically.'"

Technology giant Meta is to trial premium subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp users in the coming months. The new offerings would give access to features including expanded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Under the plan, access to the platforms' core services would remain free to use. The firm also plans to test subscriptions for features, such as its Vibes video generation app, which the firm says "can bring your ideas to life with new AI visual creation tools".

Anthropic has introduced Cowork, a new feature that uses Claude for more than just chat conversations and programming. Cowork is based on the same fundamentals as Claude Code, but focuses on general knowledge work and a broader audience. The feature is available as a beta version for Claude Max subscribers via the macOS desktop app. Claude Code quickly became popular among developers and hobbyists.

2026 will mark the inflection point where the global economy transitions from "AI-assisted" to "AI-native." We won't just adopt new tools, we'll build a new economic reality: The AI Economy. Autonomous AI agents, entities with the ability to reason, act and remember, will define this new era. We'll delegate key tasks to these agents, from triaging alerts in the security operations center (SOC) to building financial models for corporate strategy.

Focusing on AI literacy and blending human expertise with emerging technologies allows organizations to develop more impactful training initiatives. As this eBook emphasizes, it's not about machines taking over jobs, but equipping employees with the know-how they need to understand how AI tools work, what their limitations are, and how they can be used ethically within the context of their roles. For example, using AI to help create compliance branching scenarios and micro-assessments to reduce workplace risks and put judgment and reasoning skills into practice.

This National App Day, I would be remiss not to recognize how profoundly the application development landscape has changed over the last year with the rise of autonomous agents - signaling a pivotal change in how we build. As organizations integrate AI into every workflow, developers are transitioning from routine coding to designing and orchestrating systems that support agentic capabilities at far greater scale and speed.

Gartner advises organizations to block the use of AI browsers. According to the agency, these new-generation browsers pose risks that are difficult for most organizations to manage. The advice was reported on by The Register. In particular, the combination of AI functions and autonomously acting agents poses a structural security problem. The warning comes from a recent Gartner advisory. In it, analysts note that AI browsers are designed with ease of use as a priority. Security is of secondary importance.

Every enterprise today runs on more than users. Behind the scenes, thousands of non-human identities, from service accounts to API tokens to AI agents, access systems, move data, and execute tasks around the clock. They're not new. But they're multiplying fast. And most weren't built with security in mind. Traditional identity tools assume intent, context, and ownership. Non-human identities have none of those.

When we think of AI, we often picture Silicon Valley giants or futuristic sci-fi movies. But in the arena of global trade and e-commerce, AI is no longer a futuristic concept - it's rewriting the rules of global trade and reshaping competition. Across Alibaba.com's findings from over 20,000 submissions to its CoCreate Pitch entrepreneurship competition, over 60% of U.S. small businesses plan to adopt AI tools in 2025. Why? Because AI isn't a trend-it's a tsunami, and ignoring it could be the end for many.