If you are trying to make sense of where AI is headed next, this recent episode of The Next Big Idea offers an interesting perspective. Host Rufus Griscom talks with Emad Mostaque, founder of Stability AI and now Intelligent Internet, about what happens when AI moves beyond answering questions and starts running workflows.
What really stood out to us is that the real shift is not smarter chatbots. It is AI agents that can actually execute tasks across systems.
That matters because so much modern work is not one task. It is a chain of steps across software. Research. Analysis. Reporting. CRM updates. Emails. Approvals. Handoffs. Follow-up. If AI can start handling those workflows end to end, the impact on how companies operate, staff, and compete could be significant.
In simple terms:
Chatbots assist.
Agents act.
That is a much bigger operational and economic shift.
Why this matters for business leaders
One of the more interesting points from the conversation is that AI agents may not just make existing tools better. They may reduce the need for many narrow tools altogether.
Take a workflow like contract creation, approval routing, negotiation, and signing. Today, that often involves multiple tools and multiple people. But if AI can run the workflow across systems, the value may shift away from the point solution and toward the platform that can do the whole job.
That creates real pressure for SaaS companies built around one step in the process. Large platform players may simply bundle these capabilities into broader ecosystems, and because they make money elsewhere, they may not care much about margins on the individual feature.
That is a big deal.
Three implications for founders
A few practical implications stood out for us:
- Screen-based work is the first disruption zone. Research, reporting, support workflows, coding, marketing production, and internal operations are all exposed early.
- The shift will happen at the task level first. Jobs are bundles of tasks. AI will likely absorb tasks well before entire roles disappear.
- Speed becomes the advantage. Companies that redesign workflows around AI agents will move materially faster than those simply layering AI tools onto old processes.
A useful question to ask right now
For founders and leadership teams, the most useful prompt may be a simple one:
Which workflows inside the company could AI run end to end?
That is a good place to start pressure testing internally.
Because if AI is moving toward making intelligence dramatically cheaper and more scalable, the companies that rethink workflows first may have a very different operating model than the ones that do not.
Shout out to Future Proof Advisor Scott Akerley for sharing this one with us!