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If one thing\u2019s true about this moment in tech history, it\u2019s that as soon as you think you\u2019re keeping pace with the leading edge of AI\u2014poof!\u2014the edge moves.<\/p>\n
This is a perennial anxiety, but I\u2019ve never heard tech insiders so vocal about it. It came up constantly as we spoke to CEOs, founders, investors, and analysts while assembling this special issue on the new age of autonomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery couple of months, we see such massive changes that it\u2019s impossible to predict what\u2019s going to happen on what timeline. We\u2019re planning by the seat of our pants.\u201d \u2014Neel Ajjarapu, product lead for commerce, OpenAI<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhere Moore\u2019s law doubled computing power every two years, the Time Horizon law is doubling cognitive reach every four months.\u201d \u2014Azeem Azhar, founder, Exponential View<\/a>, referring to a useful way of looking at the dizzying evolution of AI agents<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAI is moving so quickly that the state of the art changes every three months.\u201d \u2014Sonya Huang, partner, Sequoia Capital<\/em><\/p>\n Because the print edition of Fast Company<\/em> comes out quarterly, we have an advantage: We are forced to take a longer view and do what Fast Company<\/em> does best\u2014look around corners. Turns out, there\u2019s a lot to see.<\/p>\n Our cover subject, Fei-Fei Li, a household name in AI circles, is building her new company on world models, a newer kind of artificial intelligence beyond large language models (LLMs). Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, is taking a victory lap for reaching profitability while preparing for the existential threat (and opportunities) posed by autonomous vehicles. And as senior staff writer Liz Segran learned when she asked robots to find her the perfect dress, agentic shopping has enormous potential but a long way to go.<\/p>\n Those stories will prep you for the next wave of AI, and maybe the one after that.<\/p>\n In the meantime, there\u2019s plenty in this issue to prep you for right now: a roundup of all the agentic AI tools and resources you should already be using, by global technology editor Harry McCracken; an essay by Azhar, an agentic AI power user who might also be a canary in the coal mine; and our third annual AI 20, a list of humans driving this technology forward.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s another thing that\u2019s true about this fast-moving moment in tech, it\u2019s that there will always be a tool that\u2019s slightly better (or slightly worse) than the one you\u2019re using. What matters is the framework your company adopts to help it make decisions about which tools to embrace, how to integrate them into workflows, and how to pivot to something new when the time is right.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real challenge isn\u2019t just technical, it\u2019s organizational,\u201d says Shiv Rao, the CEO of Abridge<\/a>, an AI platform that automates note-taking and clinical documentation for physicians. Sounds like a prescription for business leaders everywhere.<\/p>\n *At least a little bit.<\/p>\n