Aaron Levie and Steven Sinofsky on the AI-Worker Future

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a16z

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4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What exactly is an AI agent, and how will agents change the way we work? In this episode, a16z general partners Erik Torenberg and Martin Casado sit down with Aaron Levie (CEO, Box) and Steven Sinofsky (a16z board partner; former Microsoft exec) to unpack one of the hottest debates in AI right now. They cover: -Competing definitions of an “agent,” from background tasks to autonomous interns -Why today’s agents look less like a single AGI and more like networks of specialized sub-agents -The technical challenges of long-running, self-improving systems -How agent-driven workflows could reshape coding, productivity, and enterprise software -What history — from the early PC era to the rise of the internet — tells us about platform shifts like this one The conversation moves from deep technical questions to big-picture implications for founders, enterprises, and the future of work.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We thought that we were looking at the form factor of AI, which is you're talking back and forth to something.
0:05.1	The real ultimate end state of AI and thus AI agents is these are autonomous things that run in the background on your behalf and executing real work for you.
0:13.6	The more work that it's doing without you having to intervene, the more agentic it's becoming.
0:18.6	Somehow it produces the output that it feeds back into itself.
0:22.3	It's literally just the ampersand in Linux,
0:25.9	which is a background task.
0:27.6	And it's like the worst assistant in the world.
0:30.3	And agentification is just hiring a lot of these really bad interns.
0:36.3	What exactly is an agent, and how will agents change the way we work?
0:40.5	To unpack this question, we brought together three people with deep but very different
0:44.5	advantage points.
0:45.9	Aaron Levy, co-founder and CEO of Box, Steven Sinovsky, former Microsoft exec and
0:51.2	A16B board partner, and Martin Casado, Gino partner here at A17Z.
0:56.0	From the old school idea of agents as just background tasks to today's vision of fully
1:01.0	autonomous systems, we'll explore what this means for coding, enterprise workflows, and
1:06.0	how whole industries might reorganize around agents.
1:09.0	Let's get into it. I thought I'd start this wide-ranging podcast by asking the very simple, very provocative question, what is an agent?
1:19.6	Oh, boy.
1:20.6	To who?
1:21.6	Steven.
1:22.6	Oh, to me?
1:23.6	Oh, I go for it.
	...

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