The year of AI agents

 

"Generative artificial intelligence has not yet led to the hoped-for productivity increases. So-called AI agents are now expected to bring about a breakthrough as real all-rounders.

 

In a broader sense, says Conrad Caine, he runs a mechanical engineering company. Only it is not about classic manufacturing technology, but about software robots. Caine is the founder of the Munich-based software company Machines Like Me with almost 80 employees.

"Our AI agents imitate what people do on the computer every day," he says. They compare orders with offers, analyze rental contracts, prepare reports and take on tasks for municipal utilities such as receiving meter readings over the phone. "We automate routines," says Caine. "It's mainly about repetitive tasks that usually do not add any value and that many employees don't feel like doing anyway." Because: "Nobody was born to maintain Excel lists."

 

What Caine describes so figuratively as software robots is commonly known as an AI agent - and also one of the key topics at the DLD (Digital Life Design) tech conference in Munich. "AI agents will integrate artificial intelligence much more strongly into our everyday lives," said German AI pioneer Björn Ommer during a lecture there. Ommer heads the chair for computer vision and learning at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (LMU), where the AI ​​image generator Stable Diffusion was developed, among other things. Artificial intelligence understands even better what users need from it. AI agents would thus become real companions instead of AI applications such as ChatGPT, which users used more occasionally. Sam Altman, head of ChatGPT developer Open AI, recently declared 2025 to be the "year of AI agents". His chief developer Colin Jarvis said at the DLD that up to now it had always been about asking AI models questions.

In the future it will be about asking them to complete tasks. This requires the necessary reliability of the models and transparency about the basis on which the AI ​​makes its decisions.

 

The technology is intended to fulfill the promise that it made to many companies when ChatGPT was released: to significantly increase productivity in companies. Many companies are experimenting with the technology. But despite promising prototypes, scaling it up across the company has proven to be complicated. Many office employees are now profitably using the company's internal AI chatbot as a personal assistant, but major leaps in productivity are rare.

 

According to a recent survey by the management consultancy BCG, only a quarter of German companies report significant benefits from their previous AI initiatives.

 

AI agents are intended to change that. What has been common practice in the mechanical world for decades is now also to be achieved in the office by artificial intelligence: the automation of processes.

 

AI agents should not only be able to create and process texts, images, videos or other data on command like previous generative AI, but should also be able to carry out entire chains of tasks autonomously. They collect and process company data, draw their own conclusions from it and initiate the necessary actions themselves. The AI ​​assistants thus become AI colleagues who work independently. This could increase productivity by a factor of three, and in some cases even by a factor of five, believe the management consultants at BCG. Market researcher Gartner predicts that in three years a third of all applications in companies will contain AI agents. Last year the proportion was less than one percent.

 

Such figures are also known to major technology providers such as Microsoft, which itself offers AI agents for certain tasks. "In the future, managers will not only manage human teams, but also AI agent teams," says Jared Spataro, head of marketing for Microsoft's AI business with companies. He describes AI agents as the "apps of the AI ​​era."

 

Spataro's personal favorite is a sales AI agent that reads out interested potential customers from inquiries via social media or emails and contacts them independently. The AI ​​agent is supposed to find out whether the person could actually become a customer and what exactly they are looking for, in order to then hand them over to a human employee. Large companies today employ entire teams of people for this early phase of customer acquisition.

 

All of this is primarily intended to save resources. His software machines are ten times cheaper than the human alternative, promises Conrad Caine of Machines Like Me. His team looks at the processes to be automated and breaks them down into their individual parts - a kind of modern form of Taylorism, says Caine, referring to the American management consultant Frederick Taylor, who in 1911 developed a concept for refining and standardizing work processes. The individual subtasks are then carried out by dozens of specially adapted AI software modules, such as those that specialize in reading unstructured documents. These modules are orchestrated by another AI. His company produces digital employees and trains them in the company. Machines Like Me does not automate the processes 100 percent; there is always a human involved. They continue to take on a small part of the activities - for example final checks, approvals or discretionary decisions. Caine is convinced that more than a third of all administrative activities in Europe can be automated.

 

This raises questions, especially about jobs. BCG's current survey of over 1,800 companies around the world concludes that a good two-thirds of decision-makers see AI and people as complementary. Only 7 percent expect to cut jobs because of AI.

 

But the truth is also that if entire fields of activity are taken over by AI agents - for example in customer service - then employees have to be retrained on a large scale.

 

First of all, companies have to use the technology in the first place. In Germany, 30 percent of the managers surveyed by BCG believe that AI agents will be central or at least complementary to their business in the future; in the United States, the proportion is higher at 37 percent." [1]

 

1.  Das Jahr der KI-Agenten. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 20 Jan 2025: 26.   Von Maximilian Sachse, München

Kokia yra Trumpo pasaulėžiūra? Vadinkite tai neandertaliečių realizmu

 „ U.S.A.I.D., dalinančios JAV pinigus pasaulyje, sunaikinimas. Grėsmė Kanadą paversti 51-ąja valstybe. Ukrainos pažeminimas. Kas vyksta su JAV užsienio politika? Kai kurie mano, kad tai lemia asmeninis prezidento Trumpo godumas ar pomėgis diktatoriams. Ir tai gali pasirodyti tiesa, tačiau nė vienas nepasako visos istorijos. Jis tiki, kad svarbu, kiek galinga šalis, kad reikia dominuoti silpnuosius ir gerbti stipriuosius. Tai sena, kaip laikas, strategija.

 

 Nesupraskite manęs neteisingai. Labai daug to, ką D. Trumpas daro užsienyje, kaip ir tai, ką jis daro namuose, yra neryžtinga, trumparegiška ir žiauru. Tačiau jo administracijoje taip pat pastebiu pripažinimą, kad liberali tarptautinė pasaulio tvarka buvo įmanoma tik dėl JAV karinės galios ir kad amerikiečiai jau nebenori apmokėti tos sąskaitos. Tai realizmas – grubus, nestrategiškas „neandertaliečių realizmas“, kaip kadaise vadino politologas Stephenas Waltas – bet vis dėlto realizmo forma.

 

 Realistai pasaulį mato kaip žiaurią, anarchišką vietą. Jiems saugumą užtikrina ne demokratijos ideologijos skleidimas ir tarptautinių įstatymų, kuriuos privalome vykdyti, kūrimas, o buvimas stipriausiu bloko priekabiautoju ir vengimas kovoti su kitais smurtautojais.

 

 D. Trumpas nori išvengti karo su Rusija. Tai reiškia, kad užkietinsime savo širdis dėl sunkios Ukrainos padėties.

 

 Realizmo atsiradimo istorija siekia Peloponeso karą, kai Atėnai, to laikmečio supervalstybė, apgulė Melos salą ir paskelbė, kad jei jos žmonės neprisižadės ištikimybės, vyrai bus išskersti, moterys ir vaikai pavergti, o sala kolonizuota.

 

 Meliečiai protestavo, kad Atėnai neturi teisės to daryti. Atėnams tai nerūpėjo. Kilnios idėjos yra tiek patvarios, kiek jas įgyvendinanti armija. Atėniečiai ištarė Tukidido istorijoje vis dar garsią eilutę: „Stiprieji daro, ką gali, o silpnieji kenčia, ką turi“.

 

 Jei atvirai, tikriausiai, būčiau sulenkęs kelį ir dar vieną dieną gyvenęs, kovodamas slaptame pasipriešinime. Bet Melos vadovai buvo drąsesni už mane. Jie pasirinko kovą. Rezultatas? Vyrai buvo išskersti, moterys ir vaikai buvo pavergti, o sala kolonizuota. Ar jie buvo herojai ar kvailiai? Jei laikote juos didvyriais, esate liberalus internacionalistas, manantis, kad taika ir saugumas priklauso nuo teisingų vyriausybių, kurios laikosi apsišviestų taisyklių. Jei manote, kad jie buvo kvailiai, esate realistas.

 

 Praėjusią savaitę Baltuosiuose rūmuose D. Trumpas atliko atėniečio vaidmenį. Kai jis pasakė Ukrainos prezidentui Volodymyrui Zelenskiui: „Tu dabar neturi kortų“, jis kalbėjo apie strateginę šalies padėtį, o ne apie kilnias idėjas ar bendras vertybes.

 

 Viena iš priežasčių, kodėl ši administracija yra tokia dezorientuojanti, yra ta, kad JAV užsienio politika dešimtmečius vadovavosi realizmo priešingybe. Pagrindinės kovos Vašingtone, ypač pastaraisiais dešimtmečiais, vyko tarp neokonų, kurie norėjo skleisti demokratiją per karą, ir liberalų, kurie norėjo skleisti demokratiją pasitelkdami minkštąją galią, pavyzdžiui, U.S.A.I.D. pilietinei visuomenei stiprinti.

 

 Daugelį metų realistai mąstytojai buvo ištremti į akademinę bendruomenę arba ignoruojami. Hansas Morgenthau, pagrindinis XX amžiaus politologas, vienas garsiausių savo kartos realistų, patarė Johnsono administracijai neplėsti Vietnamo karo ir 1965 m. buvo atleistas. 1997 m. šiuose puslapiuose George'as Kennanas pasisakė prieš NATO plėtrą, numatydamas, kad tai pakurstys Rusijos militarizmą ir pakirs Rusijos demokratiją. Niekas neklausė. Brentas Scowcroft prezidentui George'ui W. Bushui sakė, kad įsiveržimas į Iraką būtų rimta klaida. Po to jis buvo traktuojamas, kaip pašalinis asmuo.

 

 Tačiau pastaraisiais metais realizmas Vašingtone auga. Atsirado tikroviškos politikos parduotuvės, tokios, kaip Quincy atsakingo valstybės valdymo institutas, gynybos prioritetai ir JAV didžiosios strategijos analizės centras prie RAND Corporation. „Realisto“ etiketė klijuojama apibūdinti naujosios administracijos žmones, tokius, kaip viceprezidentas JD Vance, valstybės sekretorius Marco Rubio ir nacionalinės žvalgybos direktorė Tulsi Gabbard. Vienas svarbiausių šios eros realistų mąstytojų Elbridge'as Colby yra D. Trumpo kandidatas į gynybos ministro pavaduotojus politikai.

 

 „Mes įžengiame į naują amerikietiškojo realizmo amžių“, – neseniai „Fox News“ paskelbė senatorius Ericas Schmittas, Misūrio respublikonas.

 

 Kas lėmė šį posūkį? Iš dalies tai nesaugumas, visų priekabiautojų motyvacija. Kai JAV buvo neprilygstama pasaulio supervalstybė, amerikiečiai galėjo sau leisti panaudoti savo karinę galią demokratijai skatinti, iš esmės nekreipdami dėmesio į Kinijos susidomėjimą Taivanu ir Rusijos susidomėjimą Ukraina. Šiandien Rusija ir Kinija turi hipergarsines raketas, su kuriomis JAV kariuomenė dar nežino, kaip veiksmingai kovoti. Kinija jau turi galimybę išmušti JAV palydovus kosmose, naikindama GPS sistemos, nuo kurių priklauso Amerikos kariuomenė ir mūsų ekonomika, ir manoma, kad Rusija išbando tokius ginklus.

 

 Amerikiečiai nėra pasirengę karui su Kinija. Tiesą sakant, didžioji dalis pramonės pajėgumų, reikalingų tokiam karui kovoti, dabar yra Kinijoje dėl liberalių internacionalistų, kurie nusprendė Kiniją paversti pasaulio gamykla, naivumo.

 

 Daugelis amerikiečių nebenori kovoti su mūsų sąjungininkais dėl kilnių idėjų užsienyje, ypač po pragaištingų karų Irake ir Afganistane.

 

 Dabar kyla klausimas, kokį realizmo skonį priims D. Trumpas. Įžeidžiantys realistai, tokie kaip Johnas Mearsheimeris, karą su Kinija laiko labai realia ir mirtinai rimta galimybe, o visa kita – kaip blaškymąsi. Gynybiniai realistai teigia, kad didžiosios valstybės turėtų vengti daryti tai, kas skatina silpnesnes valstybes stiprinti savo jėgas. Štai čia D. Trumpo keliai išsiskiria su daugeliu realistų. Joks tikras realistas negrasins aneksuoti Kanados, Gazos ir Grenlandijos, man pasakė ponas Waltas.

 

 Nors D. Trumpas laikosi kai kurių realizmo elementų – pasiduodamas stipriesiems ir aukodamas silpnuosius – jo tarifų karai ir grasinimai taikioms kaimynėms gali atsieiti taip pat brangiai, kaip ir ankstesnės liberalios tvarkos karinis avantiūrizmas. Rajanas Menonas, Niujorko miesto koledžo profesorius emeritas, man pasakė, kad žmonėms, kurie tikisi, kad Trumpo administracija „laikysis realizmo žaidimo knygos“ ir parodys santūrumą, „teks labai nusivilti“.

 

 Baltųjų rūmų susitikime M. Zelenskis priminė D. Trumpui, kad karas vieną dieną gali pakenkti ir amerikiečiams. "Jūs nejaučiate dabar, bet pajusite tai ateityje", - sakė ponas Zelenskis.

 

 D. Trumpas įsižeidė ir atkirto: „Tu to nežinai. Nesakyk mums, ką jausime“.

 

 D. Trumpui Amerika yra didžiulė galia, kurios Rusija nedrįstų pulti, o Ukraina yra pėstininkas, kurį galima paaukoti.

 

 Bet štai apie didžiąsias galias: jos visos ilgainiui nyksta. Neandertaliečių realizmas jų neišgelbėja. Atėnams atleidus Melosą, pasklido žinia apie jų žiaurumą. Jų sąjungininkai atsisuko prieš juos. Atėnai pralaimėjo karą. Pasirodo, kilnios idėjos yra svarbios.“ [1]

 
1. What Is Trump’s Worldview? Call It Neanderthal Realism.: Farah Stockman.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Mar 7, 2025.

What Is Trump’s Worldview? Call It Neanderthal Realism

"The destruction of U.S.A.I.D. Threats to make Canada the 51st state. The humiliation of Ukraine. What is going on with U.S. foreign policy? Some see it as driven by President Trump’s personal greed or fondness for dictators. Both might ring true, but neither tells the whole story. What matters most to Mr. Trump is not the wealth or ideology of a country but how powerful it is. He believes in dominating the weak and giving deference to the strong. It’s a strategy as old as time. It’s called realism.

Don’t get me wrong. So much of what Mr. Trump does abroad, like what he does at home, is ham-handed, shortsighted and cruel. But I also detect in his administration a recognition that the liberal international world order was possible only because of U.S. military might and that Americans don’t want to pay the bill anymore. That’s realism — a crude, unstrategic, “Neanderthal realism,” as the political scientist Stephen Walt once called it — but a form of realism nonetheless.

Realists see the world as a brutal, anarchic place. For them, security comes not from spreading the ideology of democracy and creating international laws that we then must enforce but from being the strongest bully on the block — and avoiding battles with other bullies.

Mr. Trump wants to avoid a war with Russia. That means hardening our hearts to Ukraine’s plight.

The origin story of realism dates back to the Peloponnesian War, when Athens, a superpower of that era, laid siege to the island of Melos and announced that if its people didn’t pledge their loyalty, the men would be slaughtered, the women and children enslaved and the island colonized.

The Melians protested that Athens had no right to do that. Athens didn’t care. Noble ideas are only as durable as the army enforcing them. The Athenians uttered the still famous line in Thucydides’ history: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

If I’m honest, I probably would have bent my knee and lived to fight another day in secret resistance. But the leaders of Melos were braver than me. They chose to fight. The result? The men were slaughtered, the women and children were enslaved, and the island was colonized. Were they heroes or fools? If you think of them as heroes, you are a liberal internationalist, who believes that peace and security depend on just governments that abide by enlightened rules. If you think they were fools, you’re a realist.

Last week at the White House, Mr. Trump played the part of an Athenian. When he told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, “You don’t have the cards right now,” he was speaking of the country’s strategic position, not of noble ideas or shared values.

One reason this administration is so disorienting is that U.S. foreign policy has been guided for decades by the opposite of realism. The key fights in Washington, especially in recent decades, were between neocons who wanted to spread democracy through war and liberals who wanted to spread democracy through soft power like U.S.A.I.D. contracts to bolster civil society.

For years, realist thinkers have been banished to academia or ignored. Hans Morgenthau, a major 20th-century political scientist who was one of the most famous realists of his generation, advised the Johnson administration not to expand the Vietnam War and was dismissed in 1965. George Kennan argued against NATO expansion in these pages in 1997, predicting that it would inflame Russian militarism and undermine Russian democracy. No one listened. Brent Scowcroft told President George W. Bush that invading Iraq would be a grave mistake. He was treated as an outsider after that.

But in recent years, realism has been rising in Washington. Realist policy shops like the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Defense Priorities and the Center for Analysis of U.S. Grand Strategy at the RAND Corporation have appeared. The “realist” label is being thrown around to describe people across the new administration, such as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. One of the most important realist thinkers of this era, Elbridge Colby, is Mr. Trump’s nominee for under secretary of defense for policy.

“We’re entering into a new age of American realism,” Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri, declared recently on Fox News.

What’s brought about this turn? In part, it is insecurity, the motivation of all bullies. Back when the United States was the world’s unrivaled superpower, Americans could afford to use their military might to promote democracy, essentially ignoring China’s interest in Taiwan and Russia’s interest in Ukraine. Today Russia and China have hypersonic missiles that the U.S. military does not yet know how to counter effectively. China already has the ability to knock out U.S. satellites in space, destroying the GPS systems upon which the American military and our economy depend, and Russia is believed to be testing such weapons.

Americans are not ready for a war with China. In fact, much of the industrial capacity needed to fight such a war is now in China, thanks to the naiveté of liberal internationalists who decided to make China the world’s factory.

A a lot of Americans no longer want to fight with our allies for noble ideas overseas, especially after disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The question now is which flavor of realism Mr. Trump will embrace. Offensive realists like John Mearsheimer see war with China as a very real and deadly serious possibility and everything else as a distraction. Defensive realists argue that great powers should avoid doing things that trigger weaker states to build up their own strength. That’s where Mr. Trump parts ways with many realists. No true realist would threaten to annex Canada, Gaza and Greenland, Mr. Walt told me.

While Mr. Trump embraces some elements of realism — giving in to the strong and sacrificing the weak — his tariff wars and threats against peaceful neighbors could end up being as costly as the military adventurism of the previous liberal order. Rajan Menon, a professor emeritus at the City College of New York, told me that people who expect the Trump administration “to follow the playbook of realism” by showing restraint “are going to get very disappointed.”

At the White House meeting, Mr. Zelensky reminded Mr. Trump that the war could hurt Americans, too, one day. “You don’t feel now, but you will feel it in the future,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Mr. Trump took offense, retorting: “You don’t know that. Don’t tell us what we are going to feel.”

To Mr. Trump, America is a great power that Russia wouldn’t dare attack, and Ukraine is a pawn that can be sacrificed.

But here’s the thing about great powers: They all decline eventually. Neanderthal realism doesn’t save them. After Athens sacked Melos, word of its brutality spread. Its allies turned against it. Athens lost the war. Noble ideas, it turns out, do matter." [1]

Athens lost the war, since Sparta was stronger. Sparta was a military state that valued strength, size, and fighting capabilities. Before the war, Athens won many land engagements and had a strong navy. However, Sparta's general Lysander destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BCE. After the naval defeat, Sparta laid siege to Athens, cutting off the city's food and resources. Starved by the blockade, Athens surrendered to Sparta in 404 BCE.

Noble ideas are for fools.

 
1. What Is Trump’s Worldview? Call It Neanderthal Realism.: Farah Stockman.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Mar 7, 2025.