When Machines Act: The Promise and Peril of Navigating Our Agentic AI Future
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld · David Siegel · Stephen Henriques
Mar 2027 · MIT Press
Ebook
232
Pages
Tools
info
family_home
Eligible
info
infoThis book will become available on March 23, 2027. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
Beyond the hype and above the panic: how autonomous AI reshapes work, competition, and power, and the judgments that decide where it leads.
The agentic AI conversation has hardened into two camps—the champions who promise frictionless transformation and the cynics who forecast societal collapse. But neither can help the person who actually has to make tangible decisions on any given day: the business leader who must choose where to deploy an autonomous agent; the investor who wants to separate signal from circular financing; the policymaker who writes rules that will shape a decade; or the rest of us living through a world in flux.
When Machines Act is the compass for the disciplined middle. In this book, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, David Siegel, and Stephen Henriques offer readers a clear account of the defining shift of the decade: the arrival of autonomous AI. These are systems that no longer merely answer questions but take actions, make decisions, and execute work across an entire organization or an individual’s daily life.
The book draws on decades of collective experience across the authors—as either world-renowned advisors to Fortune 500 CEOs, pioneering technologists of the computing age, or investors in major public and private enterprises. Informed by dozens of expert interviews with leaders in technology and off-the-record dialogues with more than 300 chief executives at the Yale CEO forums, it distills essential principles you can carry into a boardroom, a statehouse, or a kitchen-table conversation.
Written from inside the rooms where the choices are being made, When Machines Act is an engaging, clear-eyed, and enduring guide to our collective future.
The agentic AI conversation has hardened into two camps—the champions who promise frictionless transformation and the cynics who forecast societal collapse. But neither can help the person who actually has to make tangible decisions on any given day: the business leader who must choose where to deploy an autonomous agent; the investor who wants to separate signal from circular financing; the policymaker who writes rules that will shape a decade; or the rest of us living through a world in flux.
When Machines Act is the compass for the disciplined middle. In this book, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, David Siegel, and Stephen Henriques offer readers a clear account of the defining shift of the decade: the arrival of autonomous AI. These are systems that no longer merely answer questions but take actions, make decisions, and execute work across an entire organization or an individual’s daily life.
The book draws on decades of collective experience across the authors—as either world-renowned advisors to Fortune 500 CEOs, pioneering technologists of the computing age, or investors in major public and private enterprises. Informed by dozens of expert interviews with leaders in technology and off-the-record dialogues with more than 300 chief executives at the Yale CEO forums, it distills essential principles you can carry into a boardroom, a statehouse, or a kitchen-table conversation.
Written from inside the rooms where the choices are being made, When Machines Act is an engaging, clear-eyed, and enduring guide to our collective future.
Beyond the hype and above the panic: how autonomous AI reshapes work, competition, and power, and the judgments that decide where it leads.
The agentic AI conversation has hardened into two camps—the champions who promise frictionless transformation and the cynics who forecast societal collapse....
Discover more
About the author
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management and founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, the world’s first school for incumbent CEOs. He has advised five U.S. presidents from both parties and is the author of multiple books, most recently the New York Times bestseller Trump’s Ten Commandments. His Yale CEO forums have hosted more than 1,500 of the world’s most influential business leaders, and his commentary appears regularly in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNBC, MS NOW, CNN, and across national media.
David Siegel is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He co-founded Two Sigma, a leading investment management firm that leverages technology, AI, and data science. Guided by his focus on education and science, he founded Siegel Family Endowment to examine how technology shapes society, and Open Athena, a nonprofit organization that bridges the gap between academic research and the AI frontier. He also serves on several prominent boards, including MIT, Cornell Tech, and the DoE Science Advisory Committee.
Stephen Henriques is a senior fellow at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, an alumnus of McKinsey & Company, and a former policy advisor to the Governor of Connecticut and real estate private equity investor. He coauthored the Fortune series at the heart of this book and led the cross-industry agentic AI research that informs it.
David Siegel is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He co-founded Two Sigma, a leading investment management firm that leverages technology, AI, and data science. Guided by his focus on education and science, he founded Siegel Family Endowment to examine how technology shapes society, and Open Athena, a nonprofit organization that bridges the gap between academic research and the AI frontier. He also serves on several prominent boards, including MIT, Cornell Tech, and the DoE Science Advisory Committee.
Stephen Henriques is a senior fellow at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, an alumnus of McKinsey & Company, and a former policy advisor to the Governor of Connecticut and real estate private equity investor. He coauthored the Fortune series at the heart of this book and led the cross-industry agentic AI research that informs it.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management and founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, the world’s first school for incumbent CEOs. He has advised five U.S. presidents from both parties and is the...
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
