Anthropic's new "Agent Teams" feature moves beyond the single-agent paradigm by enabling users to deploy multiple AIs that work in parallel, share findings, and challenge each other. This represents a new way of working with AI, focusing on the orchestration and coordination of AI teams rather than just prompting a single model.

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.

The next evolution of work will involve humans acting as orchestrators for "swarms" of specialized AI agents. A manager will direct a team of agents—each trained for a specific function like email marketing or media buying—to collaboratively execute complex projects with high levels of autonomy.

The next evolution for autonomous agents is the ability to form "agentic teams." This involves creating specialized agents for different tasks (e.g., research, content creation) that can hand off work to one another, moving beyond a single user-to-agent relationship towards a system of collaborating AIs.

The most powerful AI systems consist of specialized agents with distinct roles (e.g., individual coaching, corporate strategy, knowledge base) that interact. This modular approach, exemplified by the Holmes, Mycroft, and 221B agents, creates a more robust and scalable solution than a single, all-knowing agent.

Human intelligence leaped forward when language enabled horizontal scaling (collaboration). Current AI development is focused on vertical scaling (creating bigger 'individual genius' models). The next frontier is distributed AI that can share intent, knowledge, and innovation, mimicking humanity's cognitive evolution.

Grok 4.20 uses "swarm intelligence," where multiple specialized AI agents collaborate and discuss problems before providing a solution. This approach, mirroring academic concepts, is now being commercialized to tackle more complex tasks than single models can handle.

Block's CTO believes the key to building complex applications with AI isn't a single, powerful model. Instead, he predicts a future of "swarm intelligence"—where hundreds of smaller, cheaper, open-source agents work collaboratively, with their collective capability surpassing any individual large model.

A more likely AI future involves an ecosystem of specialized agents, each mastering a specific domain (e.g., physical vs. digital worlds), rather than a single, monolithic AGI that understands everything. These agents will require protocols to interact.