Innovating with AI - A.I. agents are a huge focus for 2025

Hey there,

I hope life, work and the world of AI are treating you well! We're back with 3 big things in AI.

By the way, all the news items in today's email were shared first in our private Slack workspace for AI Consultancy Project and AI Incubator students. 🙂

#1 – A.I. Agents are happening in a big way in 2025

In the IWAI students-only Slack, we're talking about Runner H, a cool example of the many "computer user" agents that are quickly rolling out and becoming a new frontier in AI.

In short, an AI agent is sort of a super-charged version of the kinds of things our Incubator students have been building since early 2023. Instead of "just" a process or workflow, it adds more options, more "smartness" and a lot of cool opportunities to replace boring office tasks fully with AI.

Next year we are planning on a lot of new programming specifically around creating A.I. Agents, so stay tuned for that.

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#2 – ChatGPT Pro is out and costs $200/mo

OpenAI is starting to roll out what I'd describe as mid-level enterprise options, beyond its $20/mo Plus subscription (which almost everyone should get) and its $30/user/month Teams subscription (which is good if you want to share among your team or give your employees a slightly more private version of the tool).

Now, ChatGPT Pro features access to a more intense version of o1, the "deeper thinking" model that's really good at math and coding.

My favorite thing about this release is that it is easy for me to recommend that you do not buy it. Unless you are using o1 so much that you're hitting its limits, which 99% of folks are not, you can just enjoy the articles about how expensive the new option is and take no action. 🙂 If you do decide to upgrade to Pro, let me know how you like it!

From the students-only IWAI Slack chat on this topic: "I predict some Netflix-style password sharing happening in the future 🤣"

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#3 - I can't resist talking about Bitcoin and TikTok!

These are not directly AI-related, though Bitcoin mining uses the same computer chips as AI and TikTok is almost certainly going to be flooded with even more AI-augmented content soon. 🙂

First up, TikTok lost an important court challenge and it is now likely that the January 19 "ban" will go into effect if its parent company is not sold to a non-Chinese owner.

I think a lot of IWAI readers are already eager to quit social media, but a lot of people who enjoy / are addicted to TikTok are understandably upset about it being turned off, kind of like how people would be upset if you banned gambling in Vegas. (Clearly bad for you, but widely loved!)

At the same time, from a tech standpoint, it seems extremely likely that the United States government's suspicion that the Chinese government has access to a lot of the data collected by TikTok (a private business based in China) is true, which means it really is a threat in a variety of ways.

In the context of the Chip War between the U.S. and China (which is very much AI related) and the gigantic AT&T/Verizon hack that the U.S. says was perpetrated by Chinese hackers, you can see why there is bipartisan interest in Congress in getting an app that's used by millions of Americans to stop feeding everybody's data into datacenters in China.

And also, it would probably be good for everyone's mental health to have fewer TikTok-like things in our lives. On the flip side, it would be cool for Microsoft or Apple to buy TikTok and just make it a really fun and solid American competitor to YouTube.

And lastly, Bitcoin hit $100,000 per imaginary coin this week 😉, which makes today a great time to revisit Nassim Nicholas Taleb's epic post in which he (convincingly) argues that the only possible long-term value of Bitcoin is zero.

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That's all for today!

As always, if you have any questions or topic ideas for next week, just reply.

Have a great day,

– Rob Howard
Founder of Innovating with AI