A glimpse into the future: Discovering the AI of tomorrow in Silicon Valley

The trip to Silicon Valley is an integral part of the MBA program at the KU Ingolstadt School of Management (WFI). There, students can already see the developments of tomorrow. “Our experience shows that developments in Silicon Valley are about two years ahead of those in Germany”, explains program coordinator Maximilian Bauer. A massive paradigm shift is currently taking place in Silicon Valley: away from chatbots that simply provide answers and toward AI agents that take action –planning independently, using tools, and performing complex tasks. "In Silicon Valley today, you can see what will shape every industry in the coming years." Artificial intelligence no longer just answers questions; as "Agentic AI," it is able to handle entire processes independently. What still remains, is that humans set the course and bear the responsibility. Immersion Week was an outstanding experience for me. Experiencing this development firsthand and talking to the people behind it was a formative experience that shaped my studies and my future path. "What interests me the most is the question of how to really get these kinds of technologies up and running in established companies", explains Christof Biedermann

Agent-based AI has full read and write access to software. It browses the Internet, accesses application interfaces, performs transactions, and completes multi-step workflows with minimal human intervention. Companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta focused their model development on multi-stage reasoning and the use of tools. 

For companies, this means much more than just updating their software license. The new generation of AI acts as a “digital employee” with read and write access to critical systems. It browses the Internet, accesses application interfaces, performs transactions, and completes-step workflows with minimal human intervention. "But with this power come greater responsibilities and risks: Security experts are already treating the new agents as potential 'insider threats', and the risk of uncontrolled, harmful actions or skyrocketing inference costs is becoming a key focus for corporate leadership", explains Bauer.