A practical, non-technical guide for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and curious minds

“Agents are (…) bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons.” — Bill Gates
“AI agents will become the primary way we interact with computers in the future.” — Satya Nadella
“The age of agentic AI is here”— Jensen Huang

In a world where ChatGPT took us by storm, a far more powerful revolution is unfolding: AI Agents. Like Jarvis in Iron Man or Samantha in Her, these intelligent systems can execute actions, learn from experience, and orchestrate digital interactions with minimal human supervision. They promise to redefine business and society.

However, behind the excitement lies a crucial reality: a significant gap between promise and reality.

This comprehensive guide on agentic AI cuts through the hype and offers a clear, jargon-free strategic roadmap to understanding and applying this technology. The authors bring a rare perspective, having implemented agentic AI across diverse organizations—from global enterprises to agile startups—witnessing both remarkable successes and sobering failures.

Through illuminating case studies and hands-on experiments, the authors reveal:

• A step-by-step method for identifying high-value agentic opportunities and building impactful agents in your business, work, and personal life

• The secrets behind today’s most successful agentic transformations at scale: cutting costs by over 25% while boosting customer satisfaction by over 40%

• Approaches to seize the new opportunities of the Agent Economy—new business models, Agentic-driven startups, rapid scaling, and game-changing revenue opportunities.

• Hands-on guidance to navigate common pitfalls such as workflow integration, error handling, data quality, agent control, and user adoption

• The new mindset and skills required to lead effectively in a world where humans and AI agents need to work seamlessly together

• The profound impact of agentic AI on society, employment, education, and our personal lives

AI agents create what the authors call “compounding intelligence advantages”—the more they’re used, the smarter they become, creating an accelerating gap between early adopters and laggards. Hence, those who understand and leverage AI agents today will define the next business era.

The question isn’t whether AI agents will transform your industry—it’s how you will lead that change. Every revolution demands foresight and responsibility. This book challenges you to not just adopt agentic AI, but to shape it with purpose and integrity.

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As the world falls apart around them, piece by piece, Abigail Fuller spends humanity’s final days looking after her husband David.

But that’s not true, not really. Abigail isn’t David’s wife. She’s not even human. She’s a replacement, built in the image of the real Abigail, who died sixteen years ago.

And in three weeks, when the law changes, Abigail will no longer have to do anything David says. She’ll be free to go where she likes, do whatever she wants to do. But having never lived for herself, Abigail now faces profound questions about what she is, how she wants to live, and who she wants to love.

Perhaps she should start with herself.

Tender, powerful and thought-provoking, Some Body Like Me explores the boundaries of sexuality and the indefinable human capacity for love at the end of the world. Perfect for fans of Emily St John Mandel, Kazuo Ishiguro and Kaliane Bradley.

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‘An engaging, insightful and panoramic survey of where we are, why we got here and what it means. A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times’ Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind

‘For readers fascinated by the future of AI, this book is an eye-opening exploration of a revolution unfolding before our eyes’ New York Journal of Books

Stunning advances in digital technology have given us a new wave of disarmingly human-like AI systems. Chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini put the knowledge of all the world’s experts at our fingertips, and can generate meaningful sentences, equations and computer code. The march of this new technology is set to upturn our economies, challenge our democracies, and refashion society in unpredictable ways. We can expect these AI systems to soon be making autonomous decisions on the user’s behalf, with transformative impact on everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI systems ‘think’, ‘know’ and ‘understand’? Could they manipulate or deceive you, and if so, what might they make you do? Whose interests do they ultimately represent? And when will they be able to move beyond words and take actions for themselves in the real world?

To answer these questions, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explains how these strange new minds work. He charts the evolution of AI, from the earliest inklings about thinking machines in the seventeenth century to today’s gargantuan deep neural networks. The resulting book is the most accessible, up-to-date and authoritative exploration of this radical new technology. Ultimately, armed with an understanding of AI’s mysterious inner workings, we can begin to grapple with the existential question of our age: can we look forward to a technological utopia, or are we in the process of writing ourselves out of history?

‘As a leading authority in both computational neuroscience and the social impacts of AI, Christopher Summerfield is perfectly situated to explore the meaning and implications of these machines that are so uncannily like – and unlike – ourselves’ Brian Christian, co-author of Algorithms to Live by

‘AI expert Chris Summerfield takes us on a tour of this astonishing new technology, and helps us to understand the issues it raises. You might choose to be alarmed, excited, or indifferent to LLMs, but you should read Chris’s book before you decide’ Mike Woolridge, author of The Road to Conscious Machines

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