The new AI revolution – and what you’re missing

ILLUSTRATION BY RUTH MACAPAGAL

(Last of two parts)

This week, we will explore everything artificial intelligence (AI) agents will be able to do for you—and your business. So you can be at the forefront of knowledge about what is possible, and then hire an expert to make that happen for your business.

Your own people may not be the best for this

AI moves fast, super fast. Lightning speed fast. Just to give you an idea: In my company, we started to hold regular briefing meetings with top AI experts from the United States so that my team and I are always at the forefront of what’s going on, can apply it and know what will happen in the next months.

We started this at the beginning of 2023. And if we don’t hold these briefings for a week or two, I can already feel it. Because AI has moved so fast.

And in 2023 or 2024, there were new breakthrough updates and applications every month or so. Now it is every week, sometimes even every day. It is mind-blowing.

READ: Beyond ChatGPT: How to use Gen AI to work smarter

Your trap: The knowledge gap

This means: The world splits between the Know and Know-Nots. And this split is deciding between who will have the upper hand in the very near future, the competitive advantages.

What you need to realize as a leader: Of course, you do not need to know how to best use AI. This means that you don’t need to know the tech or how to actually make it happen.

But you need to know all the possibilities, and that they exist, so you can make the best strategic decisions for your business.

Otherwise, how will you be able to check if whoever you put in charge is actually doing a good job and exploring all of AI’s possibilities?

The largest competitive advantage as of right now is the knowledge gap. Precisely because AI is developing so rapidly. Most companies do not have a clue how to use AI properly, and everything you can do with it.

READ: In PH, curiosity outruns capacity for AI adoption

They may dabble a little bit here and there, but there has not been a complete overhaul in how they work. If they knew what was possible, a lot of them would radically change their companies.

How AI agents work

Most AI agents combine the following things:

1. A Brain (LLM or large language model). Usually, an LLM like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or models from Anthropic. This gives the agent reasoning ability. It can understand instructions, write, summarize, think through problems, plan steps.

2. Memory. The agent remembers previous conversations, goals, preferences, unfinished tasks.

3. Tools. This is where agents become powerful. An AI agent can use tools such as internet search, email, spreadsheets, calendar, database, code execution, CRM systems, design software, stock market APIs, etc.

So instead of merely talking, it can “do things.” For example, it can read emails, compare PDFs, create presentations, schedule meetings, run calculations and analyze financial models.

Now get this: This use case of agents is already old. Now they can even plan and execute a goal that you give them.

The AI will act as a team of agents, with one being the boss who checks the work of the other agents to see if it is complete and they have reached the “goal” as you defined it. Anthropic just came out with that feature.

Agents can break large goals into smaller steps. This resembles how a project manager thinks.

Agents can check whether what they did worked. This is how a boss would think.

The weaknesses

First of all, there still are weaknesses, there are still flaws, things still go wrong. But this doesn’t mean you or your business should sit on the sidelines. People make mistakes all the time, yet you wouldn’t fire everyone in your team, right? Exactly. AI agents still have major weaknesses. They can: hallucinate, misunderstand goals, make poor decisions, loop endlessly, miss common sense, struggle with complex judgment, fail in unpredictable environments. But guess what? So can people. But people do not improve at the drastic rate AI improves right now.

So, while today a lot of AI agents and tools still require human supervision, especially in finance, law, medicine and strategic decisions, this will soon be gone because AI can check on AI. And because the rates of improvements are staggering. AI agents will massively change white-collar work. And robots will change blue-collar work.

The three-person, one-billion-dollar business

You may smile at this, but we are getting closer every single day. Have you heard of Base44? Base44 was acquired just six months after its founding. Bootstrapped, with no outside capital, it was founded by one solo founder, and he only hired other team members a month or so before the business was acquired.

He did it all with AI. By himself. Solo founder Maor Shlomo developed and launched his AI-powered app builder in early 2025 and closed an $80-million cash acquisition deal with Wix in June of that same year.

Prior to this, founder Shlomo operated the AI platform entirely as a solo founder, handling all engineering sales, and support with zero employees.

Eighty million US dollars: Not a bad turnout for a few months of “solo” work. And this is not a unique example.

Your unforeseen enemies

What does that mean for you and your business? Unforeseen enemies are everywhere. Even if you think you have a billion-dollar or even multibillion-dollar business and you have economies of scale, huge barriers to entry, and so on, think again.

A hundred hungry unforeseen enemies can chip away at your business from all ends like hungry mice going for cheese in the middle of the night—while you sleep trying to figure out if your business should start using more AI.

I was giving a whole-day workshop and keynotes for an exclusive gathering of billionaires and high-net-worth members of the Young Presidents Organization in Monaco, and a multibillionaire self-made entrepreneur came to me afterwards and said: “Tom, my biggest learning was how you taught us to adopt a healthy sense of paranoia and to always ask what we might be missing in our business.”

That’s right.

Now with AI, you need to be — must be — super paranoid. Just like the global world order will never be the same, the business landscape will never be the same, and you need to rethink your business from the ground up. And it must be 100-percent geared towards: How can we maximize the implementation of this new technology?

Healthy paranoia

I have seen highly successful business owners put people in charge of their AI developments who had zero clue about what was going on. You need to be smart and paranoid here.

If you are in charge, you need to get the best of the best because otherwise, they will not know what is possible. And because the possibilities are increasing by the week, the faster you are at the forefront of what is happening, the faster you can widen and cement your competitive advantage.

Forget all you thought you knew about business and how to play the game. These are new rules, with endless new possibilities. The faster you get on the fastest train, the better you will protect your business.

Be paranoid about what you might be missing. Be paranoid to find and put the best people in charge.

If need be, hire experts. They can teach and advise your people. But please, don’t stand still.

Don’t wait. Don’t “dabble in AI.” Make sure your business becomes a master. /atm

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Tom Oliver, a “global management guru” (Bloomberg), is the chair of The Tom Oliver Group, the trusted advisor and counselor to many of the world’s most influential family businesses, medium-sized enterprises, market leaders and global conglomerates.

For more information and inquiries: TomOliverGroup.com or email Tom.Oliver@inquirer.com.ph.