Leading in a World Where AI Wields Power of Its Own

New systems can learn autonomously and make complex judgments. Leaders need to understand these “autosapient” agents and how to work with them.

by

Jeremy Heimans

and

Henry Timms

by

Jeremy Heimans

and

Henry Timms

From the Magazine (January–February 2024) · Long read

Ryan Snook

Summary.

AI has been subtly influencing us for years, but a new generation of vastly more capable technology is now emerging. These systems, the authors write, aren’t just tools. They’re actors that increasingly will be behaving autonomously, making consequential decisions, and shaping social and economic outcomes.

No longer in the background of our lives, they now interact directly with us, and their outputs can be strikingly humanlike and seemingly all-knowing. They are capable of exceeding human benchmarks at everything from language understanding to coding. And these advances, driven by material breakthroughs in areas such as large language models (LLMs) and machine learning, are happening so quickly that they are confounding even their own creators.

For all the wizardry and seductions of these new systems, however, our future can still be in our own hands. In this article the authors offer guidance for managing their effects in the workplace, looking for increased value in that which is uniquely human, and aligning messaging and business practices with a changing, and challenging, debate.

Idea in Brief

The Breakthrough

A new generation of AI systems are no longer merely our tools—they’re active participants in our lives, making consequential decisions and shaping social and economic outcomes.

The New Concept

We need to think of these new systems as autosapiens—“auto” in that they are able to act autonomously, and “sapiens” in that they possess a capacity to make complex judgments that can rival and even outstrip those of humans.

The Imperative

The challenge of the autosapient age will be finding ways to enhance rather than diminish human agency. To do so, we’ll need an unprecedented alliance of policymakers, corporate leaders, activists, technologists, and consumers.

The wheel, the steam engine, the personal computer: Throughout history, technologies have been our tools. Whether used to create or destroy, they have always been under human control, behaving in predictable and rule-based ways. As we write, this assumption is unraveling. A new generation of AI systems are no longer merely our tools—they are becoming actors in and of themselves, participants in our lives, behaving autonomously, making consequential decisions, and shaping social and economic outcomes.

A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2024 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Jeremy Heimans is a cofounder and the chairman of Purpose, a global consultancy that advises businesses and philanthropies on their social impact and use of technology. He is also a coauthor of New Power.
Henry Timms is the president and CEO of Lincoln Center, a cofounder of the global philanthropic movement Giving Tuesday, and a visiting fellow at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. He is also a coauthor of New Power.

Leading in a World Where AI Wields Power of Its Own

Idea in Brief

The Breakthrough

The New Concept

The Imperative

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