The next frontier for AI isn't just personal assistants but "teammates" that understand an entire team's dynamics, projects, and shared data. This shifts the focus from single-user interactions to collaborative intelligence by building a knowledge graph connecting people and their work.
Don't think of AI as replacing roles. Instead, envision a new organizational structure where every human employee manages a team of their own specialized AI agents. This model enhances individual capabilities without eliminating the human team, making everyone more effective.
To build a useful multi-agent AI system, model the agents after your existing human team. Create specialized agents for distinct roles like 'approvals,' 'document drafting,' or 'administration' to replicate and automate a proven workflow, rather than designing a monolithic, abstract AI.
While current AI tools focus on individual productivity (e.g., coding faster), the real breakthrough will come from systems that improve organizational productivity. The next wave of AI will focus on how large teams of humans and AI agents coordinate on complex projects, a fundamentally different challenge than simply making one person faster.
Early AI adoption by PMs is often a 'single-player' activity. The next step is a 'multiplayer' experience where the entire team operates from a shared AI knowledge base, which breaks down silos by automatically signaling dependencies and overlapping work.
The next wave of consumer AI will shift from individual productivity to fostering connectivity. AI agents will facilitate interactions between people, helping them understand each other better and addressing the core human need to 'be seen,' creating new social dynamics.
The new AI technology landscape is a layered 'Collaborative Intelligence Stack.' It starts with hardware and models but culminates in 'AI teammates'—agentic AIs that augment human workers. The largest future value lies in this top layer, which could capture 10-20% of the $30 trillion global knowledge worker spend.
The primary interface for AI is shifting from a prompt box to a proactive system. Future applications will observe user behavior, anticipate needs, and suggest actions for approval, mirroring the initiative of a high-agency employee rather than waiting for commands.
Agentic AI will evolve into a 'multi-agent ecosystem.' This means AI agents from different companies—like an airline and a hotel—will interact directly with each other to autonomously solve a customer's complex problem, freeing humans from multi-party coordination tasks.
Separating AI agents into distinct roles (e.g., a technical expert and a customer-facing communicator) mirrors real-world team specializations. This allows for tailored configurations, like different 'temperature' settings for creativity versus accuracy, improving overall performance and preventing role confusion.
Anthropic's goal for Claude is to be a "virtual coworker," not just a personalized chatbot. This means deep integration into team workflows like Slack and meetings, allowing it to act as a true team member. This framing explains why superficial personalization features have failed to create user lock-in; the real value lies in contextual, collaborative integration.