The New Compute: Permission & Audit
Compute isn't about GPUs; it's about who is allowed to act on your behalf. The future belongs to the safe, not just the smart.
We are still stuck in the “Hardware Mindset.” We think “Compute” means “Processing Power.” We measure it in Petaflops. We measure it in Watts.
But in the Age of Agents, the definition of compute is changing. Compute means Permission.
Who Holds the Keys?
When you ask an agent to “Manage my finances,” the bottleneck isn’t the FLOPs required to do the math. A calculator from 1980 can do the math. The bottleneck is: Does this agent have the permission to move my money?
- Does it have the API key?
- Is it trusted by the bank?
- Do I trust it not to steal?
The Winner Takes the Trust
The companies and nations that win this era won’t be the ones with the biggest data centers. They will be the ones who figure out how to run agents safely.
- Clear Rules of Engagement: “You can execute trades up to $100. Above that, you need a human override.”
- Immutable Audit Logs: “Every decision the agent makes is recorded on a ledger.”
- Kill Switches: “If the agent starts acting weird, we can cut its access instantly.”
- Guardrails: “You can read the database, but you can never, ever delete from it.”
The Sidekick Architecture
The prevailing architecture will be the Trusted Sidekick. Every important human (CEO, Minister, Surgeon) will be paired with a well-governed AI sidekick. This sidekick makes their judgment easier to scale, train, and trust.
It’s not about making the AI smarter. Smart is cheap. It’s about making the AI safer to use. Safety is the premium product.
