Nate B. Jones

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The most expensive mistake you can make in 2025 is treating AI as a search engine.

I watched a team of analysts spend six hours trying to get a frontier model to "find" a specific data point in a 400-page PDF. They treated the prompt like a Google query. They got frustrated when the model hallucinated the page number.

They were using a jet engine to vacuum a rug.

The reframe that matters: AI is not a library. It is a staff of junior associates.

If you give a junior associate a 400-page document and say "find the number," they might miss it. If you give them the document and say "summarize the methodology, flag the outliers, and then tell me if the final number matches the raw data," they will give you a masterpiece.

The difference is the "Surface of Agency."

Search engines provide access to information.

Agents provide labor on top of information.

We are moving from the era of "Access" to the era of "Execution."

I ran a test this morning. I gave the same complex task to three different teams. Team A used standard prompting. Team B used a custom-built MCP server to give the model memory. Team C used a human-in-the-loop verification system.

The results weren't even close. Team B and C finished in twenty minutes. Team A is still "fixing the hallucinations."

The infrastructure of your work is changing. If you are still building your workflows around the idea that AI is just a faster way to find things, you are building on sand.

You need to build for agency.

I’m diving deeper into the "Agency Architecture" in this week’s briefing. If you’re trying to move your team from "chatting" to "operating," this is for you. Link in the comments.

Remember: The tool isn't the moat. The way you integrate the labor is the moat.

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