NLW
Appearances
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Today on the AI Daily Brief, a fun game called Faster and Slower where we see what's moving more quickly in AI than expected and what's moving a little bit less quickly than expected. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. To join the conversation, follow the Discord link in our show notes. Hello, friends.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
But then on the slower side, he pointed to email agents, scheduling agents, wearables, and real-time voice-to-voice. A couple of specifics that I wanted to call out from Swix's list. First of all, voice agents as a theme is totally ascendant right now.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
I think it's too early to tell exactly how good it's going to be in practice, but it is absolutely happening at breakneck speed and is a huge and dominant area of building for many, many entrepreneurs, including us. One of the things that we are constantly looking at is where voice is a better input method for information because voice agents are just capable of doing that.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
I think the other really obvious one that Swix pointed out that has to have a mention is wearables. It has obviously been just a sea of carnage in the AI wearable space, perhaps best exemplified in the entire Humane pin team going to work on AI-connected printers recently. So that is the faster and slower list for now. Obviously, this conversation is meant to provoke conversation.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Come join us in the comments, share what you think, hit me up on Twitter. But for now, that is going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief. Appreciate you listening as always. Until next time, peace.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
And we just kind of sat there for a while. That was until the end of the year when it started to feel like things were picking up again with the launch of reasoning models, the emergence of more capable agents, and a number of other trends that have all contributed to the sense that I think people have now that we are in another punctuated equilibrium moment.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
So with that as background, let's talk about a few things that are moving faster and slower. And what we're going to do is go through three sets of lists. We're going to talk through first the quick list that I came up with off the top of my head. Then second, we're going to look at what the deep research tools from Grok, OpenAI, and Perplexity thought.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
And then we're going to look at one list curated from the web, which I thought was particularly interesting and had some different details than I had put in mine. All right, so starting with my list, and I'm going to bounce between faster and slower because as you'll see, sometimes they're a both and. So just to really level set, let's talk about capabilities.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
I kind of gave this away a little bit in the intro, but I think that for most of 2024, it felt like capabilities, and by that I obviously mean the specific capabilities of the underlying models and the state of the art, was a little bit slower than people expected. It felt like there was this blistering race across 2023, but then we stagnated for most of 2024 at GPT-4 level, roughly speaking.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
That seemed really weird, and in fact, some people wondered if this was just OpenAI slow-walking it because it made more sense strategically than to get out as far ahead as it seemed like they were probably going to. Obviously, now that has started to shift a little bit, and it feels like there has been a major capabilities increase.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Part of that has to do with the switch to a new approach to scaling that isn't strictly based on the amount of compute and data thrown in pre-training, but is based on new strategies like test time compute. And in fact, that leads me to my next slower. It's very clear that the pre-training scaling model has slowed down in terms of its efficacy.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
It's not that there are no gains to eke out, it's that if you look at the difference between something like Claude 3.7 Sonnet and the previous models, or Grok 3 as compared to previous models, which was of course trained on the Colossus supercluster, the type of gains that you might have expected are just not as high.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
That doesn't mean that the scaling model has broken entirely, as many will point out, but it certainly suggests for diminishing returns. Our next up, in terms of one that's both faster and slower, is around enterprise adoption.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
I think when it comes to reorganizing structures to try to adopt AI and actually making AI purchases, enterprise adoption has gone way faster than I think anyone would have anticipated. I had this thought as I was speaking to a 3,000-person live conference in Nationwide that was exclusively about Gen AI, less than two years after ChatGPT was the starting gun for this whole industry.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Welcome back to another AI Daily Brief. As you know, I am traveling this week, so things are a little bit different. No video for one, some slightly different topics for another, but I think you're going to have fun with this one, or at least I hope you will.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
enterprises have never jumped on anything this fast. There is a very clear recognition of just how disruptive and transformative this technology is going to be that goes up and down the org chart, but certainly comes straight from the top. And that's showing up in how these companies are engaging with this.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Now, on the flip side, enterprise adoption in practice, specifically the utilization of these tools, has been much, much slower. The caveat here is, of course, that a lot of usage is in this secret cyborg category where people are keeping it under wraps.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
This was a big topic of discussion throughout the last year, where people were concerned either that A, their work wouldn't be looked at as legitimate, B, they just wanted to use the tool set that they could use personally, which was ahead of the available enterprise tool set,
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
But in any case, it is absolutely true that there are many situations in which a big company has paid for 10,000 licenses of some tool, often Microsoft Copilot, and is only using 20% of them or 30% of them. Like I said, I think there are a lot of explanations for that, including the quality differential between enterprise tools and consumer-grade tools.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
But one area that I think is particularly interesting where it has been absolutely slower is the resistance that many enterprises have found among their coders and developers. Part of why this is so interesting is that it's in such stark contrast to the broader consumer AI space where coding tools have revolutionized how developers work.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
If you look at startups or individual developers, tinkerers, hackers, entrepreneurs, builders, solopreneurs, these people are outputting five, ten times the amount of work that a person in their position would have been before thanks to this new slate of coding tools. But inside the enterprises, there is real hesitance.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
One of the things that's absolutely happening right now, and I think everyone who's paying close attention feels like it, is that we are in a punctuated equilibrium moment. For those of you who aren't familiar with that term, it comes from Stephen Jay Gould and was a term that was used to describe and really change how we thought about evolution.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Now, some of that is cultural, and the uncomfortable friction between different expectations of productivity. There are also some real technical issues.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
The type of trade-offs that individual tinkerers and startups might be willing to make don't necessarily always apply in the enterprise, and a lot of those extremely high-value, low-code or no-code tools aren't necessarily optimized for interacting with enterprise codebases.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Still, it does surprise me, I have to say, every time that I talk to a new big company and they're struggling to get their developers to dig in and experiment with these new tools. I think something's got to give in that area because I don't really believe it's a fight that the coders who are trying to keep doing it the old way have any chance of winning.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Now, is there a market opportunity to retrofit certain types of AI coding tools specifically for the enterprise? Absolutely. And maybe that's what it takes. Still, I think it's a really interesting area that shows both faster and slower. Moving back to the faster side for a minute, I think that the cost reduction speed in AI has been head spinning for everyone.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
AI is very expensive, and there are these big questions of business model and how it's going to be possible for the big tech companies to make back the amount that they're spending on CapEx. But hold aside that when it comes to the end user or the end developer who's building with these tools, the cost of intelligence is just cratering at such an incredible rate.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
I think Sam Altman recently said that it was down something like by a factor of 10 each year, which is obviously radically faster than Moore's law. One of the negative externalities, in fact, of how fast this is changing is that I think it's going to make it really difficult to sort out how in particular agents are supposed to be priced.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
My guess is that agent companies are going to try to price it as a comparison to the equivalent human labor, but then other agent companies are going to say, screw that, we should base it on cost of goods sold, which is effectively negligible.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Anyways, there's going to be a lot of really interesting things that play out based on the fact that cost reduction is happening at a much faster clip than I think anyone would have thought. Over on the slower side, one of the areas that I think has been most dramatic is policy shifts.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
2023 came out screaming, looking like there was going to be a big policy discussion that really got everyone talking about AI. And we got all these AI safety institutes and different conferences and conventions and all this sort of stuff. But in terms of actual practical policy, there's been almost nothing.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
The only region of the world that's really put anything big into place is the EU with its AI Act, and the vast majority of that was created way in advance of generative AI. In fact, the EU is now concerned that they overplayed their hand with generative AI, and they're losing out because of it.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Now, this one might be more understandable given that the US had a very contentious presidential election in 2024, and that's never a recipe for big policy changes getting done, but it still seems extremely notable to me. Another one that's slower that I wouldn't have expected is weird societal changes.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
I thought we were going to almost instantly see things like people AI-ifying their loved ones and trying to interact with dead relatives. And there's certainly been some of that type of experimenting, but there hasn't been nearly as much mainstream conversation around things like that as I would have expected.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
For a long time, we thought about evolution as a steady, gradual incline, all at kind of the same pace and up into the right curve at the same angle the whole time.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Now, to some extent, this might just be me missing out on big trends that are happening because they're not up in my face. Certainly, for example, every time I heard character AI statistics of kids interacting with AI bots, they sounded crazy to me. So it's totally possible that I'm just missing something here.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
It's also possible that it was always wrong to expect this to move as fast as I thought it was going to, and that it'll take an entire generational shift for things like that, people AI-ifying their loved ones, for example, to be normalized. But I still, and this is just me personally, do feel like some of those big weird changes haven't happened quite as fast as I thought they would have.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Flipping over again to the faster side, both China and open source have been moving, I think, much more quickly than people would have anticipated. With Llama 3 last year, open source moved very close to the state of the art.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
And really, ever since the beginning of this, open source has been, I think, out-competing the closed source models in ways that people outside of the open source movement, at least, might not have expected. Now, how related that is to the fact that China is clearly not nearly as far behind as we would have thought is an open question. Obviously, U.S.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
presidential administrations have been very aggressive with China when it comes to access to advanced AI chips. And yet still, the big shocking event of the last couple of months is DeepSeek, a model which, while not necessarily beating out the state of the art from companies like OpenAI, was close enough and good enough that it has absolutely changed the competitive landscape.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
You'll know if you're a regular listener that there are a lot of geopolitical implications of China being as hot on the U.S. 's heels as they are. And that, I think, is going to be a big factor in how things play out over the next year. Finally, let's talk about agents.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
In point of fact, what it actually looks like when you dig into the fossil record is long periods of dormancy followed by massive explosionary periods of change followed by periods of dormancy followed by periods of massive change in this sort of interesting step function that goes up and gets us to the same spot, but happens in a very different and much messier way than we thought.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Once again, I think agent capabilities up until about the last couple of months felt to many like they were moving slower than people might have anticipated. And in some areas, I still think that that's true even to today. For example, I think agentic computer use is a bit behind where people thought it would have been.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
And I think that historically, there's been so much concentration around general purpose agents, right? Like people's personal agent assistants, that the fact that that use case hasn't really come to fruition has been surprising for some. Now, I never thought that that was where agents were going to go, so that doesn't surprise me as much.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
But I also think that we are now officially heading into the faster category as agent capabilities, particularly in specific verticals and in specific functions, start to come online. Basically, we needed to make a shift from thinking about agents as general purpose to specific purpose, and now things are really starting to accelerate.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Alongside that, agent adoption is poised to absolutely explode as well. Something that you can probably tell if you listen regularly is that agent adoption has completely sucked all of the oxygen out of the room when it comes to every other type of AI discussion in corporate boardrooms right now. And I think that that is going to do nothing but accelerate.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
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The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
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The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
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The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
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The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Technology evolution feels a bit like that as well, where sometimes, yes, there's just general increases, but you have these periods where it feels like you're kind of on a low burn, and then other times where it feels like everything is shifting all at once.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
So that's my personal list of faster and slower. But now let's head over and see what a couple of these different research models think. First, I used Grok3's deep search. In faster progress areas, they had model performance and capabilities, corporate purchasing, and new applications and use cases.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Under slower progress areas, they had actual utilization and integration, ethical and bias issues, data quality and management, employee adoption and change management, and regulation and governance. So basically where Grok agrees with me is around divide between corporate purchasing, which has moved faster, and every other aspect of enterprise adaptation, which has gone slower.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
In fact, basically all of Grok's slower progress areas have something to do with actual utilization or adoption inside the enterprise. What about perplexity? Perplexity, once again, pointed first to enterprise procurement and tool acquisition as an accelerated area. Another one that they thought was interesting was synthetic data adoption, and I think this is actually a good call-out.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
We basically have run up against the wall of available information much faster than we thought, which has kind of forced a shift to synthetic data adoption in a lot of cases. Now, on the slower progress side, once again, they pointed to organizational maturity and integration as well as underutilization of purchase tools.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
So at this point, definitively, between me, Grok, Perplexity, there is some big divide between enterprise purchases and enterprise utilization. Perplexity also got that there had been model innovation plateaus, which is obviously something I talked about, and they also pointed to an unexpected slowness in regulatory and ethical frameworks as well.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
And what about Big Daddy Chat GPT with its deep research? The way the deep research took it is instead of producing a list of faster and a list of slower, they went category by category and looked at what was faster or slower within that category.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
So on enterprise and business adoption, they once again identified that evolving faster than expected was the rapid uptake in investment as well as initial ROI and use case delivery, but that the pilot to production pipeline was happening at a crawl, and that ROI was unrealized at scale.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Now, of course, when you dig underneath, perhaps part of what the difference was, was that things were bubbling and brewing during those theoretically quiet times. But whatever it is, I think that it's safe to say that a good chunk of 2024 felt like one of those low periods. So much of the time was spent trying to catch up to GPT-4, and then everything got there.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
On the research and breakthrough side, they identified surprising leaps in capability and an explosion of model innovation and diversity, but pointed to reliable reasoning and truthfulness as evolving slower than expected. Over in regulation and policy, they pointed to a sudden urgency in oversight discussions as evolving faster, but formal regulation lagging much behind.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
On creative and consumer adoption, maybe the most obvious one, they pointed that consumer uptake is happening at record speed, that there's incredible creative tool adoption and output, but that evolving slower is acceptance within creative professions and public trust and content quality issues.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
On the infrastructure and compute side, they pointed to a surge in AI infrastructure investment and advances in specialized hardware and tools as evolving faster than expected, but energy efficiency and cost dilemmas as well as supply constraints and GPU crunch as evolving slower than expected. So a lot of the same themes that we heard from these other areas as well.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Faster/Slower: Where AI Is Moving Ahead of Expectations and Where its Lagging
Lastly, a couple that come from Swix, who's the host of the Latent Space podcast, as well as the curator of the AI Engineer Summit, which I emceed in New York on Friday. His list of faster than expected included deep research, reinforcement learning in agents, dev agents and low-code agents like Cursor and Bolt, voice customer support agents like Sierra and Decagon.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Today on the AI Daily Brief, the geopolitical stakes of agentic AI. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. To join the conversation, follow the Discord link in our show notes. Hey, hello, friends. Welcome back to another Long Reads episode of the AI Daily Brief.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Now, clearly we are at the very beginning of this type of conversation, but it's one which is salient and pertinent right now and one that I'm excited to see people talk more about. For now, though, that is going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief Long Reads edition. Appreciate you listening as always. And until next time, peace.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Unlike generative AI large-language models, LLMs, that create content, the hallmark of agentic AI is its ability to make decisions and carry out complex actions autonomously, with minimal human supervision.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Agentic AI usually consists of teams of AI agents, some with specialized roles, such as gathering information or carrying out tasks, while others act as team leaders or orchestrators of activities. Agentic AI harnesses the cognitive abilities of LLMs, but combines these with other forms of machine learning and automation to make better decisions and take actions.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Another key difference is agentic AI systems are goal-oriented, set to optimize particular objectives, such as maximizing customer satisfaction or minimizing the cost of a particular production process.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Although nascent, agentic AI is attracting attention from businesses and governments because of its potential to supercharge productivity and efficiency, what has received less attention is its potential to drastically change the dynamics of political rivalry between nations. In particular, agentic AI is likely to alter the nature of the geopolitical contest across three interrelated spheres.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Technoeconomics, influence and opinion shaping, and the security, intelligence, and military contest. Until recently, the techno-economic sphere has largely been a race between the United States and China for AI supremacy, or at least parity for China. The electrifying entry of DeepSeek, a low-cost, largely open-source model, into the generative AI space in late January caused U.S.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
technology stocks to tumble and shattered assumptions of American AI supremacy. But the bigger story is the democratization of core AI technologies and their availability to every nation, large or small, rich or poor. Developing economies will find it much easier to harness agentic AI systems to turbocharge work activities, address the skills gap, and boost productivity. The U.S.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
may step up export controls on high-end chips and tighten restrictions on foreign AI systems, but bit by bit, the techno-economic playing field is starting to even up. The contest for geopolitical influence, where nations and interest groups joust for control of political narratives or to sway public opinion, is also set to be transformed.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
While governments and malign actors have long used technology to sway opinion, think old-style radio propaganda or more recent manipulation of social media, agentic AI opens up unprecedented opportunities. AI has been used to gather data on citizen views and improve political deliberation.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Agentic AI bots could act as personal political whisperers, synthesizing disparate views and data sources to help individuals arrive at an informed fact-based decision.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Research has shown AI can be at least as persuasive as humans in changing views on contentious issues such as assault weapon bans and carbon taxes, with AI messages viewed as being more factual and logical, but less angry and more unique than those from humans.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
For those of you who are new here, Long Reads episodes come out over the weekend, and they are different than the format of the other shows.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Equally, however, agentic AI models could be used by malign actors to micro-target those susceptible to false narratives or quickly scale up misinformation in the mass media. Agentic AI teams could be tasked with maximizing the clickability of false content or orchestrating distraction campaigns to defeat certain political goals or movements.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Eleanor Fournier-Toombs, head of anticipatory action and innovation at the UN University Center for Policy Research, believes agentic AI may help overcome some challenges in political deliberation, such as enabling deliberation across much larger groups, overcoming linguistic barriers, and leading participants to clear outcomes.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
But it could also lead to ethical gray zones, such as by incorrectly summarizing views or polluting the process with inappropriate or harmful ideas or content. Finally, agentic AI opens up a vista of radically different competition and cooperation in the diplomatic, intelligence, and military domains.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
AI has displayed its ability to engage in diplomatic games and maneuvering, with the model Cicero scoring twice as high as human players in the board game Diplomacy. Agentic AI is also attracting interest from military planners, especially in light of its enhanced contextual awareness and ability to juggle multiple fields of operation and orchestrate commands.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
In Long Reads episodes, the way that it works is I turn over an article or two, usually, to an AI version of myself to quote-unquote read them, which is basically just a way for you guys to listen to the source material, and then I myself come back and discuss them. Most times they don't have video, sometimes they do, but in general, it's an audio-only experience.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Mark Williams, a cognitive science professor at Loughborough University, said the U.S. military views agentic AI as the future of military combat, and is funding work to ascertain how AI can complement and extend human expertise in areas such as decision-making and combat. This can help to minimize the risks associated with human judgment and reduce the impact of stress on combat performance.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
But agentic AI also raises serious ethical issues, such as the extent to which such systems can be trusted and the allowance made for human oversight and control. Many questions remain unanswered. How will agentic AI alter the balance of geopolitical power? Will the net effect be socially beneficial or disruptive?
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Much will depend on factors such as the speed of agentic AI development and adoption in the major economic blocs of the US, Europe, and China. But a key factor will be the differing international approaches to AI regulation. As the recent AI Action Summit in Paris showed, cracks are emerging among Western nations, with the European Union favoring an AI safety approach and the U.S.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
decrying perceived overregulation in Europe. With agentic AI escalating both risks and opportunities for governments and businesses, the world of geopolitics is set to enter a new and more unpredictable phase. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. That's where Vanta comes in.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Businesses use Vanta to establish trust by automating compliance needs across over 35 frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Centralized security workflows complete questionnaires up to 5x faster and proactively manage vendor risk. Vanta can help you start or scale up your security program by connecting you with auditors and experts to conduct your audit and set up your security program quickly.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Plus, with automation and AI throughout the platform, Vanta gives you time back, so you can focus on building your company. Join over 9,000 global companies like Atlassian, Quora, and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. For a limited time, this audience gets $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash nlw. That's v-a-n-t-a dot com slash nlw for $1,000 off.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
If there is one thing that's clear about AI in 2025, it's that the agents are coming. Vertical agents by industry, horizontal agent platforms, agents per function. If you are running a large enterprise, you will be experimenting with agents next year. And given how new this is, all of us are going to be back in pilot mode.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
That's why Superintelligent is offering a new product for the beginning of this year. It's an agent readiness and opportunity audit.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Over the course of a couple quick weeks, we dig in with your team to understand what type of agents make sense for you to test, what type of infrastructure support you need to be ready, and to ultimately come away with a set of actionable recommendations that get you prepared to figure out how agents can transform your business.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
I do this as a way to add value by curating articles that I think are making interesting This is one of those times where we're going to read two pieces. The first is an op-ed by Mark Purdy that was published in the South China Morning Post called Rise of Autonomous Agentic AI Raises the Geopolitical Stakes.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
If you are interested in the agent readiness and opportunity audit, reach out directly to me, nlw at bsuper.ai. Put the word agent in the subject line so I know what you're talking about. And let's have you be a leader in the most dynamic part of the AI market. All right, back to the real non-AI NLW.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Like I said at the beginning, there is another piece coming, but I wanted to talk about this one briefly. I think the main point that the author is trying to make here is that by explicitly being autonomous, or at least more autonomous, a genetic AI has a different potential to impact how people think about themselves and how people are influenced in the world.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Basically, to the extent that we deputize autonomous agents to do more things for us, they might also have more power to shape our opinions on things. A lot of the author's time is spent on influence and opinion shaping, with the main thesis seeming to be that agents up the stakes even more than just regular AI.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
More broadly, even if you don't agree with any of the specifics of his opinion, the author's point is that agents are raising the stakes. And with that context, let's move over to our second piece, this one by James Cooper and Keshav Kampella, called Why AI Should Be a Hallmark of U.S. Foreign Assistance. Once again, turning it over to the AI version of myself. The future of U.S.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
global leadership hinges on more than military might or economic dominance. It is also the battle for the hearts and minds of people across the world. In short, soft power matters. With U.S. foreign aid funding frozen and Secretary of State Marco Rubio now acting as administrator of USAID, Washington is reassessing its role on the world stage.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
The outcome is likely to reshape the very foundation of U.S. foreign assistance. We have a bipartisan and urgent recommendation for policymakers in the Beltway. Artificial intelligence must become a pillar of U.S. foreign assistance. AI is transforming industries, education, commerce, and security worldwide.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
But expertise in AI remains concentrated in the hands of a few rich states, leaving developing countries at a disadvantage. The U.S. has the opportunity and the strategic imperative to bridge this gap. AI can assist in disaster preparedness, streamline humanitarian responses, and also help governments predict and mitigate risks.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
It can boost economic growth, improve public security, and enhance governance. AI can be a force multiplier offering the best return on investment for U.S. global engagement. The U.S. is well positioned to lead in AI-driven foreign assistance.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Without transferring sensitive technology, Washington can help allies craft AI regulations, training their government officials and sharing best practices for integrating AI into public administration. The U.S. government has already deployed AI in countless ways, from optimizing supply chains to detecting fraud.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
These lessons can be invaluable to partner countries seeking to modernize citizen services. The benefits are not just external. AI can also enhance the efficiency of U.S. foreign aid itself, automating internal processes, identifying wasteful spending and improving congressional oversight. Beyond governance and development, AI is a strategic asset in the global competition for influence.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
The US AI industry, projected to make trillions in investments before the end of the decade, thrives on network effects. The more users worldwide adopt American platforms, the stronger those platforms become. By expanding the adoption of its AI abroad, the US can also shape global AI standards and regulations. Soft power remains the United States' not-so-secret weapon.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
A 2023 Gallup survey found the U.S. still enjoys a soft power edge over the People's Republic of China in 81 countries. But that edge may be eroding. Hollywood, once a dominant force in cultural diplomacy, has seen its influence wane. While seven of the top 10 Chinese box office hits in 2012 were Hollywood productions, by 2023, not a single U.S. film made the cut.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
In this shifting landscape, the remaining U.S. cultural ambassadors are its universities and technology giants. Silicon Valley, home to Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI, still captivates global imaginations. Partnering with these companies to train young professionals abroad can help cement U.S. influence for decades to come. AI is more than just a tool. It is a purveyor of values.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Algorithms shape perceptions, beliefs, decisions, and even moral frameworks. TikTok, the crown jewel of China's soft power, influences global audiences through subtle algorithmic nudges. But AI goes further. It does not just expose users to content. It actively generates answers to their questions.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
The United States must ensure that its AI technologies, built on principles of transparency, accountability, and innovation, dominate the global market. If Washington fails to act, the AI leadership crown could pass to Beijing. China understands the strategic importance of AI tools and policies.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Over the past decade, Beijing has poured more than $1 trillion into the Belt and Road Initiative, expanding its infrastructure and digital footprint across 150 countries. AI is now embedded within the initiative's ecosystem, backed by China's state-controlled technology giants. While China excels in hardware, the U.S. continues to dominate software.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Until recently, Beijing's AI efforts were largely domestic, with exceptions like TikTok. But the launch of DeepSeek, China's large-scale AI model, signals a quantum shift. India, traditionally wary of Chinese apps, has expressed interest in DeepSeek. If the U.S. does not assert its AI leadership abroad, China will fill the void. Rubio has outlined a clear litmus test for U.S. foreign aid.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
It must make the U.S. safer, stronger, and more prosperous. AI checks all three boxes. It enhances global stability, fuels economic growth, and ensures that the United States sets the digital rules of engagement for the 21st century. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, the United States must make it the cornerstone of its foreign assistance.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Agentic AI will further level the techno-economic playing field and radically alter opinion shaping and the military contest. All right, so let's turn it over to the AI version of me to read the piece and then we'll come back and discuss it.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
AI is the key to winning friends and influencing countries in the 21st century. All right, back once again here. Again, I think what's interesting to me about this is hold aside the specifics of the argument. Both of these pieces are saying that AI is a key player in the geopolitical contest and the changing geopolitical environment.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Now, the two points that I think are interesting about this piece specifically are one, the idea of AI as a tool for soft power, and two, the idea of AI as infrastructure for a new era of American geopolitical engagement in general. Taking those in reverse order, obviously we're in a big moment of transition when it comes to America's relationship with the world.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
One where effectively we are withdrawing from our historical power commitments and basically saying to the rest of the world, you figure it out. It's obviously way beyond the scope of this show to dig into whether that's a good or bad idea or the various perspectives around that question. But what is undeniable is that it's in the process of happening.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Now, of course, it's not like the US is going to become completely isolationist overnight and not have any engagement with the world. And so it's interesting to me that AI is presented here effectively as a way to make whatever continued engagement that we have with the world work better.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
The second part on the idea of AI as soft power is also particularly interesting, both in ways that they articulate in this piece, but also in a way that's not articulated as much here. The way that's articulated is, of course, AI as a way to spread ideas and values.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
The TLDR on this is that in a world where a huge amount of our interaction with information is mediated by AI, the particular biases and perceptions and stances and what's available in that AI is going to have an impact on how people see things. The most obvious recent example of this is the fact that DeepSeek, popular as it is, will not talk to you about Tiananmen Square.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
It is clearly coming out of a Chinese context where it has to toe the line of the CCP. I think Americans like to believe that our particular approach to that sort of information is not as censored as the Chinese government's version, but even without censorship, values do get communicated and embedded in these tools.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
And so it is a consideration which AI people use will shape how they see the world. The part that's not discussed as much here, but which I still think is really important, is the idea of AI as an equalizing economic force around the world. The global economy is going to be completely remade in a variety of ways by the emergence of artificial intelligence.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
Imagine a world where artificial intelligence, AI, agents could act as personal political advisors, negotiate for governments on foreign policy, or carry out integrated military operations in war zones. These scenarios are increasingly possible with the emergence of agentic AI.
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Agentic AI as a Tool of US Diplomacy?
One of the impacts of that could be a different type of talent distribution where expensive labor in the US, specifically expensive knowledge work, has much cheaper equivalents outside who have come up to a level of similar capability thanks to AI. Viewing that explicitly as a tool of foreign policy or just geopolitical positioning in general is something I think really interesting to consider.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Today on the AI Daily Brief, Google's AI co-scientist shows the future not only of scientific research, but of multi-agent systems. Before that in the headlines, is meta-AI going enterprise? The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. To join the conversation, follow the Discord link in our show notes.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
And just before it had posted that role, interestingly, Meta had also started to allow its AI models to be used by the U.S. military. Right now, it's all still very mum, but you're starting to get the type of leaks and intrigues that suggest that maybe they're going to make bigger play in the enterprise.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Certainly from the standpoint of super intelligent, that's something we're watching closely as it would absolutely be a player and change the calculus for big enterprise companies thinking about their AI and agentic strategies.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Speaking of big companies, apparently money talks and BS walks because despite years of lambasting Microsoft and all the other big companies, Salesforce is now in talks with Microsoft, Oracle, the company they were basically designed to disrupt, and Google about cloud deals to handle their AI.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Salesforce's president and chief engineering officer said in an interview earlier this week that they're in advanced negotiations with Microsoft, Google, and Oracle for a deal worth more than a billion dollars over the next several years. Salesforce apparently wants to rent the servers to run its customer management, AI agent, and other applications.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Obviously, if you've been watching Salesforce at all, agent force is the big focus of the company. It is very clear to me, frankly, that Benioff is betting the entire farm on agent force and what it becomes. Billion dollars isn't nothing, obviously, but will Microsoft get over the fact that Benioff has just been out here screaming about what a disaster Copilot has been?
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Get the popcorn because this is going to get interesting. Moving over into the world of startups, sort of, I don't exactly know what you would consider DeepSeek, given that they came out of a multi-billion dollar hedge fund. But in any case, DeepSeek, as the lab that has been putting out these models that have everyone in a tizzy, is apparently considering raising outside money for the first time.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
This seems to be based on the reporting, both an opportunity consideration as well as a constraint consideration. Because it came out of this quantitative hedge fund, it hadn't needed to raise outside funding so far, but it now has so much use that it probably needs to resource up.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
The information reports that they have been fielding a bunch of inbound interest from people like Alibaba, as well as a number of Chinese state-affiliated funds. That includes China's Sovereign Wealth Fund, as well as their National Social Security Fund.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
More broadly, it sounds like they're trying to consider how much they want to keep focusing on research and competing on that level versus building a revenue business based on the success of their products. At this stage, DeepSeek is officially in the conversation. They are a player in this AI battle.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
And I think a lot of the next moves they make over the next couple of months are going to tell us a lot about where they want to sit in that fight. Lastly today, another AI unicorn round. Together has jumped to a $3.3 billion valuation in their latest funding. Together calls themselves the AI Acceleration Cloud, and they're highly focused on the enterprise.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
We kick off today with some interesting intrigue around Meta and their AI strategy. This is something I've been watching closely. I think a lot of people have wondered, is Meta going to try to compete in the enterprise or corporate domain? Or are they just going to try to own consumer AI or at least the foundations and underpinnings of consumer AI? Certainly, Meta is at core a consumer company.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
The round was led by General Catalyst, with the participation of Salesforce Ventures, NVIDIA, and also the venture capital fund of Aramco. Now, Together was a unicorn even before this. They had raised previously $106 million last year at a $1.25 billion valuation.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
But tripling that valuation in just a few short months ain't bad, especially for a company that's not building its own foundation models. Anyways, that is going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief Headlines Edition. Next up, the main episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. That's where Vanta comes in.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Businesses use Vanta to establish trust by automating compliance needs across over 35 frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Centralized security workflows complete questionnaires up to 5x faster and proactively manage vendor risk. Vanta can help you start or scale up your security program by connecting you with auditors and experts to conduct your audit and set up your security program quickly.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Plus, with automation and AI throughout the platform, Vanta gives you time back so you can focus on building your company. Join over 9,000 global companies like Atlassian, Quora, and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. For a limited time, this audience gets $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash nlw. That's v-a-n-t-a dot com slash nlw for $1,000 off.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Thank you so much for having me. That's why Superintelligent is offering a new product for the beginning of this year. It's an agent readiness and opportunity audit.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Over the course of a couple quick weeks, we dig in with your team to understand what type of agents make sense for you to test, what type of infrastructure support you need to be ready, and to ultimately come away with a set of actionable recommendations that get you prepared to figure out how agents can transform your business.
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Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
If you are interested in the agent readiness and opportunity audit, reach out directly to me, nlw at bsuper.ai. Put the word agent in the subject line so I know what you're talking about. And let's have you be a leader in the most dynamic part of the AI market. Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief. Today, we are talking about something that I'm really excited to dig into.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
On the one hand, we're talking about AI and how it's going to advance science, a big theme and, in fact, one of the big motivations for some of the leading actors in the AI space. But we're also going to be talking about the emergence of multi-agent systems, how agents come together, each with individual purposes, and are coordinated to do something much bigger.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
When I look at this news and I look at what Google has shared, I don't just see some really cool advancements for science, although I certainly see that. I also see a template for the type of multi-agent system that is going to become absolutely ubiquitous in the years to come. Now, before we get into Google's announcement, let's look at what Sam Altman had to say about scientific discovery in AI.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, these are all consumer products that touch a huge portion of the world's population. And even their interactions with businesses are mostly in the form of selling them ad space to sell to those consumers. Lama, though, is really interesting because Lama as a platform and as the vanguard US open source AI leader has a ton of potential in that enterprise sphere.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
So that's a really big, bold pronouncement. And it's something that Altman and others have said a lot. The question for many has, of course, been, okay, but how? Because one thing that's clear is that the current crop of LLMs isn't off making scientific discoveries on their own. So then, is it about underlying models and them just needing to be smarter? Or is it about something else?
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Well, what it looks like after reviewing this new Google announcement is that it's not just about the model. It's about how specific agents using models come together to do work. So earlier this week, Google posted on their company blog, Today, Google is launching an AI co-scientist, a new AI system built on Gemini 2.0 designed to aid scientists in creating novel hypotheses and research plans.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Researchers can specify a research goal, for example, to better understand the spread of a disease-causing microbe, and the AI co-scientist will propose testable hypotheses along with a summary of relevant published literature and a possible experimental approach. AI co-scientist is a collaborative tool to help experts gather research and refine their work.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
It's not meant to automate the scientific process. Okay, so that's the overview, but where it gets really interesting is in their longer blog post where they actually explain this all. First of all, it's clear right from the beginning that part of the opportunity comes from new long-term planning and reasoning capabilities of models. The goal is really ambitious.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
They write beyond standard literature review, summarization, and quote-unquote deep research tools, the AI co-scientist is intended to uncover new original knowledge and to formulate demonstrably novel research hypotheses and proposals. So how does it do this? Google writes, to do this, it uses a coalition of specialized agents.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Generation, Reflection, Ranking, Evolution, Proximity, and Meta Review. In their most simple pictorial diagram, they show three elements. The first ingredient for this is test-time compute, this new approach that is underpinning reasoning models.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Then they show this group or team of individual agents who all have a different function, organized under a supervisor agent, all of which are, of course, organized under a scientist. Then lastly, they have a research ideas tournament that shows how new ideas are proposed, evaluated, and refined. So let's get more into these specific agents. First comes, of course, the scientist.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
The scientist in question specifies the research goal in natural language. Google also points out that they can suggest their own ideas and proposals and interact via a chat interface to guide the system throughout the process. After the scientist inputs the research goal, a research plan is configured and then the co-scientist multi-agent system goes into effect. First up is the generation agent.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
The generation agent includes a literature exploration and simulates scientific debate. And at each step of the way, each agent is introducing a new set of research hypotheses that are being put into what they call ranking agent tournaments. Google describes those tournaments in this way. Research hypothesis comparison and ranking with scientific debate in tournaments.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Limitations and top win-loss patterns are summarized and provided as feedback to other agents. This enables iterative improvement in quality of research hypothesis generation, creating a self-improving loop. Point being that this approach to tournament-style ranking and review and contesting of different ideas happens at each agentic step.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
And so I've been wondering if they were going to make a play for that space. This got a little bit more interesting last November when Meta poached Clara Shi from Salesforce. She had been the CEO of Salesforce AI and joined Meta to explicitly start a new group that was building AI tools for business.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Okay, so first we have that generation agent, then we move on to the reflection agent. The reflection agent does a full review with web search, a simulation review, it does a tournament review, and what they call deep verification. Next up is the evolution agent. Its job is to take inspiration from other ideas and then add simplification and do a research extension.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Finally, there's the proximity check agent and the meta-review agent, which ultimately formulates a research overview which is sent back to the scientist for feedback. All of this is organized by a supervisor agent, which allocates resources between the different specialized agents.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
And so again, here we are not only seeing the scaffolding of a co-scientist, but a scaffolding for how a multi-agent system might work for a variety of different problems. When it comes to how they decide which are the best ideas, Google writes, the AI co-scientist leverages test time compute scaling to iteratively reason, evolve, and improve outputs.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Key reasoning steps include self-play-based scientific debate for novel hypothesis generation, ranking tournaments for hypothesis comparison, and an evolution process for quality improvement. They continue the self-improvement relies on the ELO auto-evaluation metric derived from its tournament.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Due to their core role, we assessed whether higher ELO or ELO ratings correlate with higher output quality. And they found that they did. And so while all of this sounds really cool, what were the actual results in some of these early tests?
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Well, first of all, when experts assessed the ideas from the AI co-scientists, they found that they have higher potential for novelty and impact as compared to other models. But they also tested them in real-world laboratory experiments around drug repurposing, proposing novel treatment targets, and elucidating the mechanisms underlying antimicrobial resistance.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
So around drug repurposing, which is basically about taking existing drugs and finding new therapeutic applications beyond their original intended use, Google applied the AI co-scientist to, quote, assist with the prediction of drug repurposing opportunities and found that the AI co-scientist proposed novel repurposing candidates for acute myeloid leukemia.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Google writes, subsequent experiments validated these proposals, confirming that the suggested drugs inhibit tumor viability at clinically relevant concentrations in multiple AML cell lines. Next up, they moved to the even more complex-than-drug repurposing identifying of novel treatment targets.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
They focused on liver fibrosis, with the AI co-scientist identifying epigenetic targets with significant antifibrotic activity. Once again, they found a lot of success, even saying that the findings will be detailed in an upcoming report led by collaborators at Stanford University.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Subsequent to joining Meta, it sounds like she went and recruited a bunch of people from throughout the company who had worked on some of the key products. The speculation is now about what they're actually going to do.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Finally, in their third validation test, they looked to generate hypotheses to explain bacterial gene transfer evolution mechanisms related to antimicrobial resistance. For this test, researchers instructed the AI co-scientist to explore a topic that had already been subject to novel discovery in their group, but had not yet been revealed in the public domain.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
And while the terminology here is so dense that I won't even get into it, the TLDR of this is that the AI co-scientist was able to independently propose discoveries that had already been made, but had not yet been revealed. So that's three examples of really profound success. This is what led Professor Ethan Malik to say, we're starting to see what AI will accelerate science actually looks like.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
And that's incredibly exciting. However, again, as Rohit here points out, what's more interesting is that it's a way to make the multiple LLMs with tools idea actually work in practice. I am very, very excited to continue to see what Google can do with this particular line of research and Google AI co-scientists specifically.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
But I'm also excited to see even more broadly these types of multi-agent systems come to actually be deployed and accomplish really interesting and novel things. I think a lot of 2025 and even 26 are going to be spent on very discrete agent experiments that are about a specific task or a specific workflow. But where it gets really interesting is in these multi-agent systems. And who knows?
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
Maybe this will happen even faster than I think. For now, that's going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief. Until next time, peace.
The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Google's AI Co Scientist and the True Power of Multi-Agent Systems
One thing that the information point out is that last year they had posted a role called Director of Public Senator Engagement that was responsible for, quote, building and leading a high-performing team from the ground up to drive adoption of safe and transformative solutions for AI across federal, state, and local government agencies.