The speaker highlights a significant and exciting trend: the exponential growth in AI consumption, which is directly translating into wild revenue increases for AI providers. However, they immediately introduce a crucial distinction regarding the nature of this consumption, categorizing much of the current usage as "synchronous."
Synchronous AI usage, as described, involves direct, real-time, human-initiated interactions. This encompasses common scenarios like users engaging with conversational AI models such as Claude Code, invoking AI coding assistants like Codex, or directing tasks to AI tools like Droid. The speaker offers a stark analogy to underscore this point: if everyone were to suddenly become unavailable or "woke up sick tomorrow," a substantial portion of cloud code usage would effectively drop to zero. This vividly illustrates the present dependency of many AI operations on immediate human input and instruction. In essence, current AI largely functions in a "co-pilot mode," where it assists or executes tasks *after* being prompted by a human user.
The core of the speaker's foresight lies in a bold prediction for the near future: within the next 12 to 24 months, they anticipate a radical shift where an overwhelming 90% of AI "tokens"—the fundamental units representing AI processing and activity—will transition from synchronous to "asynchronous" usage.
Asynchronous tokens represent the advent of truly autonomous AI agents, which the speaker refers to as "droids." Unlike their synchronous counterparts that wait for explicit commands, these asynchronous entities will operate independently, proactively, and without the need for real-time human intervention for every action. This signifies a move beyond mere assistance to genuine self-directed intelligence.
The speaker provides compelling examples of how these autonomous droids will function:
* "Hey, here's some signal that I found from a customer, let's go fix it." This illustrates an AI agent independently monitoring data, identifying critical insights (customer signal), and then proactively suggesting or initiating corrective actions without being specifically asked to look for that signal.
* "Let's go create a first-pass solution to this." This suggests an AI not only identifying a problem but also autonomously formulating and initiating the development of an initial solution, further exemplifying its proactive and problem-solving capabilities.
This evolution marks the beginning of what the speaker terms "agent-native stuff." It represents a maturation of AI capabilities where the systems themselves initiate processes based on their understanding of the environment and predefined objectives, rather than simply responding to human commands.
While acknowledging that current "agentic" interactions—where a user gives an AI a complex task ("hey, go do this for me") and it executes it with minimal back-and-forth—are more sophisticated than simple conversational queries, the speaker emphasizes that these are still fundamentally initiated by a human. Even in these advanced co-pilot scenarios, a human is "kicking it off." The true "agent-native" future envisions AI systems that independently identify needs, discover problems, and initiate solutions, driving a profound transformation in how AI integrates into and influences various domains. This shift from reactive assistance to proactive, autonomous operation is poised to redefine the landscape of AI consumption and its impact.