Why context-aware AI agents will give us superpowers in 2025
2025 will be the year that big tech transitions from selling us more and more powerful tools to selling us more and more powerful abilities. The difference between a tool and an ability is subtle yet profound. We use tools as external artifacts that help us overcome our organic limitations. From cars and planes to phones and computers, tools greatly expand what we can accomplish as individuals, in large teams and as vast civilizations.
Abilities are different. We experience abilities in the first person as self-embodied capabilities that feel internal and instantly accessible to our conscious minds. For example, language and mathematics are human created technologies that we load into our brains and carry around with us throughout our lives, expanding our abilities to think, create and collaborate. They are superpowers that feel so inherent to our existence that we rarely think of them as technologies at all. Fortunately, we don’t need to buy a service plan.