Understanding The 3 Waves of AI

💼 In Today’s 5-min AI Brief

• Your Everyday AI Toolkit: Turn gSheets into a smart assistant with an AI formula. 

• Prompt of the Week: Map the tasks in your job an AI agent could own.

• AI News You Can Use: Big players are shifting from "chat with AI" to "delegate to AI."

• What I’m Learning: Claude gets sharper, ElevenLabs gets smoother. And “vibe coding.”

AI is evolving quickly, but it’s not random. It’s unfolding in waves. 

In today’s edition of The AI Brief, I’ll break down the 3 distinct waves of AI - Predictive (1), Generative (2), and Agentic (3) - so you can recognize where we’ve been, what’s happening now, and what’s next. Here’s a video of my explanation as well.

You'll also get a prompt to help you “think in agents” and a breakdown of last week’s biggest AI shifts, including tools and features you might want to test this week.

🛠️ Your Everyday AI Toolkit

Turn gSheets into a Smart Assistant (Wave 1: Predictive AI)

I’ll break down the 3 waves of AI a little later, but let’s start where most teams can get immediate wins: Wave 1. Predictive AI isn’t as flashy as agents or chatbots, but it still powers some of the highest-leverage workflows, especially inside tools you’re already using.

One of the faster ways to boost performance with AI is by unlocking the Gemini AI capabilities already within your Google applications. If you often find yourself using Google Sheets, you’ll want to try out a formula that will turn gSheets into a smart assistant for forecasting, categorizing, and summarizing data.

On your computer, open a Google Sheets spreadsheet with at least a few rows of data and follow these steps:

1. In a cell, enter an AI function 

• For example: =AI(“Generate slogan for event in 10 words or less”, A2)

2. Select the cell or cells with an AI function.

3. Locate the Gemini icon that appears on the bottom left of the highlighted cells and click Generate and Insert.

• Optional: To refresh output, click Refresh and Insert.

Simple setup, big payoff - especially for operators, analysts, or marketers working with messy spreadsheets. Give it a go when you're next using gSheets.

💭 Prompt of the Week

Example input:

“List 3 recurring tasks I do in my role as a sales manager…”

Example output:

• Task: Follow up with warm leads

• Observe: Monitor CRM for status updates

• Plan: Prioritize leads by engagement level

• Act: Draft and send personalized follow-ups via email

• Reflect: Track replies and log outcomes

• Tools: HubSpot, Gmail, Notion

Most people don’t realize how much of their role could be handled by an AI agent until they break it down. Once you get in the habit of “agent-ifying” tasks like this, you'll start to see how AI can become part of your actual org chart.

💡 AI News You Can Use

You’ve probably heard terms like “generative” or “agentic” thrown around, but breaking AI into 3 clear waves makes it way easier to spot where things are headed. It helps you understand what today’s tools can (and can’t) do, and why Wave 3, Agentic AI, is a big shift. Let me break it down:

• Wave 1, Predictive AI: uses historical data to forecast outcomes - think dashboards, lead scoring, and demand prediction.

• Wave 2, Generative AI: creates content based on prompts, emails, images, code, and more, but always with human direction.

• Wave 3, Agentic AI: goes further by executing multi-step tasks across tools and platforms with little to no oversight.

Last week’s biggest updates show how fast Wave 3 is accelerating.

• OpenAI’s next move is voice-native agents. Early signals suggest GPT-5 will go far beyond chat. Voice-first features are in the works, pointing to more natural, hands-free AI interactions - less like texting a bot, more like talking to a teammate. 

  • This aligns with OpenAI’s broader vision for agentic AI that senses context, acts autonomously, and blends into real workflows.

• Meta is automating the messy stuff. Internal reports show Meta is using AI to automate up to 90% of privacy and safety reviews, previously a massive human effort.

  • The takeaway: AI isn’t just getting creative or chatty, it’s getting operational. And it’s quietly taking over some of the least glamorous (but most critical) workflows.

• Perplexity goes past Deep Research with this new feature: Perplexity Labs. 

  • Think of Labs as a team of autonomous agents that runs for 10+ minutes, with web-search, image & data viz to make complete dashboard apps & reports. Here are TikTok and YouTube demos.

📖 What I’m Learning

If you’re interested in what I’ve been digging into… check out:

1. Rick Rubin: “Vibe Coding is the Punk Rock of Software”. Rick Rubin wrote a book on vibe coding… yes, the legendary music producer. I enjoyed his comparison that vibe coding enabled everyday people to create technology, similar to how punk rock enabled people who weren’t highly-trained musicians to express themselves musically.

2. Opus 4 outperforms GPT-4.1 and Gemini 2.5 Pro in coding benchmarks - Opus 4 is outscoring GPT-4.1 and Gemini 2.5 Pro in coding and reasoning tests. Bonus: you can now switch between “Fast” and “Deep” modes, like flipping between sprint and strategy mode.

3. Introducing ElevenLabs Conversational AI 2.0 - Conversational AI 2.0 is here with smoother back-and-forth, real-time language switching, and enterprise-grade polish. It even has HIPAA compliance.

Final Thoughts

Understanding the 3 waves gives you more than a history lesson - it gives you a mental model for the future. 

👉 If you didn’t get the chance to, be sure to check out my video breakdown of the 3rd Wave of AI.

Right now, your edge comes from learning to manage AI like a teammate. The faster you move from user to orchestrator, the more value you’ll unlock.

Thaddeus