The OG AI Agent (You’ve Had One This Whole Time)
AI agents are all the rage.
But what exactly is an AI agent and what is the basic concept behind it?
At its essence, an AI Agent is a 3rd party which performs tasks on your behalf so that you don’t have to. You give it some instructions – a nudge – and then it goes off and performs that task, either on a one-time basis, or continuously. AI agents are in their infancy right now (Meta, during its earnings call yesterday, would not even reveal how many people were using its agents, analysts speculating the number being relatively low and the company not wanting to be embarrassed by the number).
Let’s apply the concept in a hypothetical to provide some color. Let’s say you do walking steps every day. 10,000 of them, to be exact. Imagine, if you will, giving this assignment to an AI agent that performed the steps for you, 24/7, while you did other things - but still benefited from the steps.
Science fiction I know, but still fun to think about.
Or even more fantastical, imagine if you told your AI Agent to help you fund your young child’s future college. Always the loyal servant, the AI agent worked for you 24/7, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and when your kid turned 18 and was ready to head off to college, your AI Agent proudly presented you with 75% of the money needed to attend. You didn’t even lift a finger other than the initial ‘nudge’ you gave the Agent to get going.
I know, I know, crazy ideas…but wait. Such an AI agent does exist!
Its code name is not Muse or Instinct or Dots, but rather….Money.
Here’s how it works in practical terms. Let’s say you need $400K 18 years from now to pay for your kid’s college but only have a portion of it now. You give your AI agent named Money (also likes to be called “Investing”) $100K (the nudge) and clear instructions. Day after day Money works for you – while you are having lunch, while you are at the beach, while you are hugging your kids, while you are on vacation, while you are sleeping at night…. In 9 years, AI agent Money has doubled your 'nudge' to $200K, and 9 years after that – just doing a middling job (AKA average historical stock market returns) - voilà, Money comes back to you with $400K, having accomplished the task of providing 75% of the cost of education. Without your having to lift a finger.
In my recent book, The Other Birds & Bees: Money $ecrets No One Taught You(which was just named the 2026 Pencraft Book Award winner in the Nonfiction Money and Financial Planning category), we refer to money as workers – and encourage young people to hold on to as many of their workers as possible rather than giving them to someone else in exchange for something they probably don’t really need (like a fancy pair of shoes).
When you think of your hard-earned dollars as potential money making (and compounding) AI agents working for you 24/7, 365, it can really shift your perspective on how you think about investing.