23/02/2026

BIZ & FINANCE MONDAY | FEB 23, 2026 17 AI agent invasion has people trying to pick winners

The statement signed by 86 countries did not include concrete commitments to regulate the fast-developing technology, instead highlighting several voluntary, non-binding initiatives. “AI’s promise is best realised only when its benefits are shared by humanity,” said the statement, released after the five-day AI Impact Summit. It called the advent of generative AI “an inflection point in the trajectory of technological evolution”. “Advancing secure, trustworthy and robust AI is foundational to building trust and maximising societal and economic benefits,“ it said. The summit – attended by tens of thousands including top tech CEOs – was the fourth annual global meeting to discuss the promises and pitfalls of AI, and the first hosted by a developing country. Hot topics discussed included AI’s potential societal benefits, such as drug discovery and translation tools, but also the threat of job losses, online abuse and the heavy power consumption of data centres. Analysts had said earlier that the summit’s broad focus, and vague promises made at the previous meetings in France, South Korea and Britain, would make strong pledges or immediate action unlikely. The United States, home to industry-leading companies such as Google and ChatGPT maker OpenAI, did not sign last year’s summit statement, warning that regulation could be a drag on innovation. “We totally reject global governance of AI,” US delegation head Michael Kratsios said at the summit on Friday. The United States signed a bilateral declaration on AI with India on Friday, pledging to “pursue a global approach to AI that is unapologetically friendly to entrepreneurship and innovation”. But it also put its name to the main statement, the release of which was originally expected on Friday but was delayed by one day to maximise the number of signatories, India’s government said. Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, criticised the lack of a meaningful declaration, saying it was just NEW YORK: An onslaught of artificial intelligence 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. Futurum chief strategist Shay Boloor sees the moment as an “inflection point” where millions of AI agents will soon be routinely handling tasks long tended to by people. “We’ve never had a tech disruption at this scale before,” Boloor told AFP. “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 recent new versions from OpenAI and Anthropic. 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 startup has even more ambitious agentic aspirations. Investors quickly saw AI agents as a threat to software publishers, particularly those serving businesses.

“I’m waiting to see these new companies or industries that are created (by AI).” AI angst is spreading way beyond the tech industry. A recent blog post by US entrepreneur Matt Shumer titled Something Big Is Happening includes a prediction that AI will 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” will ripple through the service sector, Shumer predicted. Some observers have criticized Shumer’s post. In an opinion piece at the Mind Matters website, technology consultant Jeffrey Funk called it “hype” driven by fear. “The markets are a rational mechanism,“ analyst 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.” – AFP

o The risk is not overinvesting, but underinvesting in transformative technology, says strategist

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 xAI nipping at its heels in the market for professional AI. Even though massive spending on AI infrastructure has some investors worried, Boloor contends “the risk is not overinvesting, but underinvesting” in the transformative technology. Schloetzer reasons that the economic impact of AI may 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.

Monday.com, in workplace collaboration, along with Salesforce and Thomson Reuters with its tax, accounting and trade software arms saw their stock value plummet 30% 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,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. “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 which specialises

Global summit calls for ‘secure, trustworthy and robust AI’ NEW DELHI: Dozens of nations including the United States and China called for “secure, trustworthy and robust” artificial intelligence, in a summit declaration on Saturday criticised for being too generic to protect the public.

Visitors arrive at Bharat Mandapam, one of the venues for AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi. – REUTERSPIC

US tech CEOs – OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Dario Amodei of Anthropic – to hold hands on stage. The next AI summit will take place in Geneva in 2027. In the meantime, a UN panel on AI will start work towards “science-led governance”, the global body’s chief Antonio Guterres said. The UN General Assembly has confirmed 40 members for a group called the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence. India has used the summit to push its ambition to catch up with the United States and China in the AI field, including through large-scale data centre construction powered by new nuclear plants. Delhi expects more than US$200 billion in investments over the next two years, and US tech giants unveiled a raft of new deals and infrastructure projects in the country during the summit. – AFP

And “we underscore the importance of developing energy-efficient AI systems” given the technology’s growing demands on natural resources, it said. Computing expert and AI safety campaigner Stuart Russell told AFP that Saturday’s commitments were “not completely inconsequential”. “The most important thing is that there are any commitments at all,“ he said. Countries should “build on these voluntary agreements to develop binding legal commitments to protect their peoples so that AI development and deployment can proceed without imposing unacceptable risks”, Russell said. Some visitors had complained of poor organisation, including chaotic entry and exit points, at the vast summit and expo site in Delhi. The event was also the source of several viral moments, including the awkward refusal of rival

“another round of generic voluntary promises”. “The fact that this declaration drew such wide endorsement, especially from the US, which held out in Paris, tells you what kind of agenda it is: one that is AI-industry approved, not one that meaningfully protects the public,” she told AFP. Saturday’s summit declaration struck a cautious tone on AI safety risks, from misinformation and surveillance to fears of the creation of devastating new pathogens. “Deepening our understanding of the potential security aspects remains important,“ it said. “We recognize the importance of security in AI systems, industry-led voluntary measures, and the adoption of technical solutions, and appropriate policy frameworks that enable innovation.” On jobs, it emphasised reskilling initiatives to “support participants in preparation for a future AI driven economy”.