An onslaught of artificial intelligence (AI) agents that handle tasks from writing code to dispensing tax advice has the tech world and financial markets scrambling to pick winners and shed losers.
Gone are the days of being satisfied with OpenAI’s ChatGPT simply creating responses to text prompts.
Makers of leading AI models have embraced “agentic” capabilities that provide software assistants capable of independently tending to tasks, such as creating software applications, based on simple descriptions.
Photo: AFP
Futurum Group chief strategist Shay Boloor sees the moment as an “inflection point,” in which millions of AI agents would soon be routinely handling tasks long tended to by people.
“We’ve never had a tech disruption at this scale before,” Boloor said. “It’s extreme. The market is underwriting that future uncertainty in a doom-based scenario.”
The turning point has been marked by rapid-fire releases of ever-improving AI models, including new versions from OpenAI and Anthropic PBC.
Add to that the November debut of autonomous AI agent OpenClaw that some have equated to the fictional “Jarvis” AI assistant from the Iron Man superhero films.
The creator of OpenClaw was snapped up by ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, signaling that the San Francisco-based start-up has even more ambitious agentic aspirations.
Investors quickly saw AI agents as a threat to software publishers, particularly those serving businesses.
Monday.com, which specializes in workplace collaboration, along with Salesforce Inc and Thomson Reuters Corp with its tax, accounting and trade software arms saw their stock value plummet 30 percent or more on Wall Street in a matter of days.
Georgetown University management professor Jason Schloetzer recounted a recent chat with a chief executive who remarked about no longer needing consultants since there was “one in my pocket” thanks to AI.
“There’s paranoia around AI in every industry,” Wedbush Securities Inc analyst Dan Ives said. “I believe it’s way overdone.”
He viewed the concept of AI models replacing enterprise software and cybersecurity firms as “a fictional tale.”
As AI agents begin shaking up work, creators of large language models powering them continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into a battle for supremacy.
Claude-maker Anthropic has OpenAI, Google’s Gemini and even Grok from X.AI Corp (xAI) nipping at its heels in the market for professional AI.
Even though massive spending on AI infrastructure has some investors worried, “the risk is not overinvesting, but underinvesting” in the transformative technology, Boloor said.
Schloetzer said that the economic impact of AI might not be clear for several years, the same way it took time for the Internet itself to become a vital part of daily life.
“Suddenly, entirely new businesses that had no economic attractiveness without the Internet started to exist, like Netflix,” Schloetzer said. “I’m waiting to see these new companies or industries that are created” by AI.
AI angst is spreading far beyond the tech industry.
A blog post by US entrepreneur Matt Shumer titled “Something Big Is Happening” includes a prediction that AI would be tackling jobs in law, finance, accounting, consulting, medicine and other fields.
The experience that tech workers had of seeing AI go from a “helpful tool” to something that “does my job better than I do” would ripple through the service sector, Shumer said.
However, some observers have criticized Shumer’s post, calling it “hype” driven by fear.
“The markets are a rational mechanism,” Ives said of company shares being punished by AI worries. “We’re going to get to a crossroads here pretty soon where things will settle down.”
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS