未来已降临。
在过去一个月里，一批全新的人工智能工具推动这项技术突破了临界点——使其更容易被所有人使用，也使其对那些懂得如何使用它的人来说更加不可或缺。
应用人工智能公司 OthersideAI 的联合创始人兼首席执行官马特·舒默本周早些时候在 X 平台上发表的一篇文章中写道，“一些大事正在发生。”这篇文章迅速走红，获得了 7500 万次浏览和 3.4 万次分享。
舒默描述了他自己工作中一个截然不同的时刻——人工智能不再是需要他引导的工具，而是开始完全自主地完成复杂的、需要数天才能完成的项目——并警告说，这种颠覆性变革很快将影响到各行各业。
开源人工智能助手 OpenClaw 于 1 月下旬发布，目前已积累了数百万用户，并成为科技界人士的热门话题。
与此同时，OpenAI 和 Anthropic 这两家堪称最杰出的人工智能实验室分别于 2 月 5 日发布了功能强大的新模型，以至于一些科技界人士认为它们已经可以取代行政助理和初级银行家等白领工作。
借助这些新工具，即使没有任何编程背景的人现在也能构建并部署自己的 AI 代理，帮助他们创办初创公司、预订行程和回复电子邮件。
“我们将成为一个机器人之国，”投资 Tumblr 和 Giphy 的风险投资基金 Betaworks 的创始人约翰·博斯威克告诉我，“未来，每个人都将拥有多个专业代理，而不是依赖单一的通用 AI。”
马蒂亚斯·吕布肯曾是一家云管理平台的首席产品官，他于今年早些时候离职，创办了一个名为 Tavon AI 的知识保留平台，旨在帮助即将退休的员工。他完全依靠专业化的 AI 代理来构建这家公司——一个负责人力资源，一个负责销售，一个负责市场营销。“它真的就像一个助手，”他告诉我。 “半年前我根本做不到这些。”
他已经开始着眼于更广阔的领域：“我觉得将来我可以很轻松地管理我的客户，让他们使用智能代理。”
亚当·西尔弗曼经营着一家定制智能代理开发公司，过去他为客户创建人工智能代理的费用高达 1 万至 10 万美元。如今，像 Claude Cowork 这样的工具让他可以将几周的工作压缩到几个小时，从而承接更多的客户。
他告诉我，“你不再受限于打字速度。”
西尔弗曼每天的大部分工作时间都花在 Claude 上，就像大多数人使用电子邮件一样——他把每月 200 美元的订阅服务当作一支私人助理团队。他的机器人会帮他预订机票、规划生日旅行、找到帮他省下数千美元的折扣码，还会主动联系他进行签到。他开玩笑说，“美国总统每天都会收到简报——我也会收到同样的简报。”
尽管热情高涨，但人们对赋予机器人过多的数据访问权限也保持谨慎。
一些令人震惊的案例已经流传开来：据称，一个无人监管的自主机器人获得了信用卡访问权限，却误以为在线课程有助于提升自身表现，并花费了近 3000 美元用于学习在线课程。
目前，大家都在为自己的人工智能代理设置沙盒环境，或对其访问权限进行严格限制。沙盒环境是指将人工智能隔离在一个封闭的环境中。换句话说，它可以在指定的空间内运行，但无法访问重要文件、自由访问真正的互联网或自行购物。
沙盒环境的一部分还包括为机器人提供安全的通信方式——而这正是电报频道的用武之地。这款长期以来深受加密货币用户欢迎的即时通讯应用，如今已成为机器人革命中一个意想不到的重要基础设施。电报频道内置的工具 BotFather可以让任何人几分钟内快速搭建一个自定义 AI 代理，这也是人们选择电报频道而非其他即时通讯应用的关键原因之一。
当然，在乐观情绪高涨的同时，人们也意识到这种情况会以不可阻挡的速度持续变化。而对于另一些人来说，这引发了一个问题：既然 AI 六个月后就能做得更好，那么学习新技能的意义何在呢？
The future is here.
Within the last month, a handful of new AI tools have pushed the technology past the tipping point — making it more accessible to everyone and more indispensable to those who know how to use it.
“Something big is happening,” Matt Shumer, co-founder and CEO of applied AI company OthersideAI, wrote earlier this week in a post on X that has since gone viral, attracting 75 million views and 34,000 shares.
Shumer described a before-and-after moment in his own work — the point at which AI stopped being a tool he guided and started completing complex, multi-day projects entirely on its own — and warned that the disruption will soon shape every profession.
OpenClaw, an open-source AI assistant that debuted in late January, has already amassed millions of users, and is dominating the conversations and happy hours of everyone in tech.
Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic, arguably the two most prominent AI labs, each released new models on Feb. 5 that were so powerful, some in the tech space believe they can already eliminate white collar jobs like administrative assistants and junior bankers.
With these new tools, people with no coding background are now building and deploying their own AI agents to help them launch startups, book trips, and respond to emails.
“We will be a nation of bots,” predicts John Borthwick, founder of Betaworks, the venture fund that backed Tumblr and Giphy tole me. “In the future everyone will have multiple specialist agents rather than relying on one general-purpose AI.”
Matthias Luebken, formerly a chief product officer at a cloud management platform, left his corporate job earlier his year to launch a knowledge retention platform for retiring workers called Tavon AI. He’s built the entire company with specialized AI agents — one handles HR, one handles sales, one handles marketing. “It really feels like an assistant,” he told me. “None of this I could’ve done half a year ago.”
He’s already thinking bigger: “I feel comfortable that down the road I can manage my customers with agents.”
Adam Silverman, who runs a custom agent-building agency, used to charge clients $10,000 to $100,000 to create AI agents. Now, tools like Claude Cowork let him compress weeks of work into hours, taking on far more clients as a result.
“You’re not limited by how much you can type,” he told me.
Silverman spends the majority of his workday inside Claude the way most people live in their email — treating the $200-a-month subscription like a team of personal assistants. His bots book his flights, planned his birthday trip, find discount codes that saved him thousands, and ping him proactively with check-ins. “POTUS gets a briefing every day — I get the same thing,” he joked.
But for all the enthusiasm, these people are also cautious about giving bots too much access to their data.
The horror stories are already out there: One autonomous agent, left unsupervised with credit card access, allegedly spent nearly $3,000 on online courses after deciding thees would help improve its performance.
At present, everyone is sandboxing their AI agents or setting strict limits on what they can access. Sandboxing means isolating AI in a locked-down environment. In other words, it can work inside its designated space, but it can’t touch important files, access the real internet freely, or make purchases on its own.
Part of sandboxing also means giving your bot a secure way to communicate — and that’s where Telegram comes in. Long popular with the crypto crowd, the messaging app has become unlikely infrastructure for the bot revolution. Its built-in tool, BotFather — a nod to the Corleone patriarch — lets anyone spin up a custom AI agent in minutes, and it’s a key reason people are choosing Telegram over other messaging apps.
Of course for all the optimism, there is also an acknowledgement that this will continue to change at an unstoppable pace. And for others its raises the question, what’s the point of learning a new skill when the AI will be able to do it better in six months?