AI is the one all glorifying buzzword that won’t go away. Everyone and their mother are obsessed with misty promises of sparkling dollar signs, efficiency, speed, and doing more with less. It’s as if everyone expects to strap jet engines onto their bicycle with some pink Velcro and suddenly outpace Max Verstappen in his angry Aston Martin. But the true power of AI, specifically agentic AI, goes far beyond this simplistic narrative of brute force productivity.
So let’s unpack this: an “agent” in AI isn’t just some glorified calculator spitting out faster spreadsheets. Nope, it’s a smart system that senses the environment, makes independent decisions (you read that right) , and acts purposefully towards well-defined goals. It doesn’t just blindly turbocharge tasks; it clarifies what tasks genuinely matter, quickly separating the critical signals from the noisy clutter. It’s not raw speed; it’s laser-sharp clarity.
Now, let me throw in Schrödinger’s cat, because why not? This classic quantum thought experiment involves a poor cat stuck inside a sealed box with a device that could either kill it or leave it unharmed, based purely on chance. Quantum mechanics says that, bizarrely, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead until someone peeks inside. That state of weird simultaneous uncertainty… sounds familiar? It’s exactly how we handle most of our business decisions every damn day. Until you really check into your multiple options, your choices hover precariously between brilliant and absolutely ridiculous. But often these options are shrouded by the misty data mists hovering around Avalon.
And that, friends, brings us what I call the MCP Paradox. MCP here stands for Model Context Protocol (the way AI systems can quickly make sense of context). Until this clear context is established and crunched, all potential fabulous decisions linger in this fuzzy, Schrödinger-like state of ambiguity, simultaneously great and terrible. Think of it as your personal business decision-making twilight zone. Here’s where agentic AI kicks open Schrödinger’s box. It resolves that MCP Paradox by swiftly establishing context and collapsing the ambiguity into actionable insights. It’s not just blindly crunching numbers or spitting out endless reports: it quickly delivers precise clarity that transforms your decision-making from hesitant tiptoeing into decisive strides forward.
This isn’t just your average and dusty Return on Investment (ROI). My SxSW buddy @Brian Solis cleverly called this deeper value “Return on Ignorance: a superior yet more difficult to quantify version of ROI. This isn’t about generating more stuff faster, or cheaper or (argh, I hate the concept!) “at scale”, but rather rapidly removing ignorance and indecision. Traditional productivity obsesses over output. Agentic AI prioritizes the speed of insight, instantly stripping away the ignorance we’ve somehow grown comfortable with. Turning costly data in actionable intelligence is the name of the game. And, in my daily life it proves a sensible remedy for my thirsty and endless curiosity.
Practically, that means fewer pointless meetings, less time chasing after leads destined for the dustbin, and far less energy wasted on blurry strategies. A plethora of precious moment saved 😊. Imagine instantly knowing if your metaphorical Schrödinger’s cat -your project, your strategy- is alive and thriving, flat-out dead, or has cleverly escaped through some quantum loophole.
Real productivity today isn’t measured in sheer output or speed. It’s about how quickly and decisively you can gain clarity and act upon it. In our accelerating world, this decisiveness isn’t just an advantage; it’s the most valuable luxury we have. Agentic AI finally hands you that luxury: immediate, uncompromising clarity that lets you act boldly and confidently amidst uncertainty.
So next time someone tries to sell you AI as a mere productivity enhancer, remember Schrödinger’s cat, the MCP Paradox, and the transformative power of clarity.
Because productivity isn’t just doing more cheaper, it’s doing precisely what’s needed… fast.
