AI agents to replace humans as basic units of a company, Lee Kai-fu says

“The basic unit of a company will evolve from a human being to an AI agent,” Lee said on Thursday at a summit on disruptive technologies hosted by Swiss bank UBS. AI agents are software apps that use AI to autonomously execute tasks and achieve goals on behalf of users.

Lee pointed out that AI agents could operate around the clock, be replicated infinitely, and scale effortlessly – capabilities unmatched by human workers. “If you have a super employee, you can’t replicate [them], right? Human cloning is not legal, but AI agent cloning is perfectly fine, and they will scale,” he said.

“You can completely use agents as Lego blocks,” he said. “So you have a Lego block that’s [human resources], a Lego block that’s legal, a Lego block that is finance, and then a Lego block for customer service, et cetera.”

“Then you can have a huge, giant Lego-created machinery that is your company agent, where the CEO interacts and manages the company, and that’s what [OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman means when he says there will be US$1 billion companies.”