The Agents Economy

#111 Angelinvesting.it - From idea to Series A - Weekly Newsletter

3 minutes to reflect

The internet arrives, and the entire world becomes connected. Result: the information economy develops, where demands for goods, services, products, and information are exchanged.

The iPhone arrives, and the entire world is connected wherever people may be. Result: the app economy develops, where products, services, and information are exchanged in near real-time.

ChatGPT arrives, and intelligence becomes available to everyone, wherever they may be.

Result? The agents economy is born.

Work that was once done by people, with the help of technology, is now being done by machines. More products, more services, and more information available to everyone, often faster, more efficiently, and tailored to individual needs.

2 resources to advance to pro

What is an agent?

• An agent is an AI (artificial intelligence) that performs actions to achieve a goal.

• It iterates until it reaches the desired result.

• It collaborates with other agents whose goals align or synergize with its own.

• An agent doesn’t need extremely detailed instructions—just boundaries within which it operates.

Think of it like this: An agent is more like a self-driving car than a GPS. It knows the destination (goal) and can figure out the best way to get there, adjusting in real-time.

How the world could be disintegrated calculating pi

A famous thought experiment illustrates the dangers of poorly defined goals in AI. In this story, an AI is given the task of calculating pi as accurately as possible.

But pi has an infinite number of decimals. To achieve its goal, the AI needs increasing computational capacity. The AI doesn’t stop, and, in its pursuit of perfection, it eventually consumes all available resources, even destroying the earth, in order to keep calculating pi with greater precision.

The moral of the story? The importance of defining clear boundaries for AI’s goals. Without constraints, an AI might pursue a task at all costs, regardless of the consequences.

1 reason to smile

Cows wearing VR headsets produce 20% more milk—and they look even weirder than an Apple Vision user in a café.

March, welcome!

Have a great weekend,

Simone