You get an agent, you get an agent, we all get an agent

What will we take for granted in just a few years from now?

I recently read a biography of the Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur. It shared the story of brothers who built the first successful flying machines. In 1903, the Wright Flyer 1 had a mechanism that required the pilot to twist their body within a frame to control the wings, allowing the plane to turn. Crude versions of the controls we would recognise today, and a pilot seat did not come until 1905 with the Wright Flyer 3.

After the three months it took to ship their plane from the USA to France and rebuild it, Wilbur had become rusty at flying. This seems ridiculous, but at that point, he had not logged enough hours in the plane to fly as deftly as he had been a few months before in the plains of Kitty Hawk. Thousands of people came to sit in grandstands to watch Wilbur fly, as if it were some new sport. European Royalty and the average person came to see the spectacle.

Today, we take flying for granted. When I open Plane Finder on my phone, I can see the thousands of planes flying around. We think nothing of arriving at the airport and boarding a plane for a twenty-hour flight to the other side of the world or a quick weekend trip to another city.

This made me think about everything we take for granted: Internet connectivity, computing, and software in general.

In just a year or two, we'll take AI for granted. We won't discuss it the way we do today. Products will utilise AI to solve our problems and make us more productive; we won't even consider it. We'll all have a collection of agents helping us navigate life, whether it's a team of agents working with us to build more software or an agent who helps us book our business trips or holidays in a way that minimises costs and maximises rewards.

Business owners will have agents helping them make informed decisions for their business, such as determining the optimal quantity of stock to purchase and when to make purchases. Agents to help find new products to add to their range, and agents to create content to sell these new products best.

AI will augment every role. Yes, it will replace some roles, but it will also make many other roles more effective.

Today, the interface is clunky and requires some learning, much like having to twist a frame to control the wings. Pretty soon, though, we'll be sitting in a chair with an optimised set of controls, allowing us to fly. The difference this time is that it will allow anyone to be a pilot.