The five ages of AI
Prompt, agent, collaborator, advisor, architect. Where you are, where the work is going, and which end is still informed speculation.
The five ages is Value Matters’ own map of the relationship between a professional and the machine. The age of the prompt: learning to ask a chatbot a good question, which is where most sales teams still are. The age of the agent: you hand over a goal rather than a task, and the machine works out the steps. The age of the collaborator: a shared, persistent piece of work that both of you understand and both of you improve, which is Mollick’s co-intelligence made concrete and, for a key account, the living account plan. Beyond that, the advisor and the architect, which the book marks plainly as informed speculation.
The map is useful because it separates the tool question from the work question. Moving from one age to the next is not about a better model. It is about a different division of labour, and the KAM who has thought about which age each part of their job belongs in is ahead of the one waiting for the software to decide.
Set out in full in: Creating Customer Value Propositions with AI (Kogan Page, 2027), chapter 9.
Related terms
Prompt
The instruction you give an AI model. The single biggest factor in the quality of what comes back. Also, in the book, a structured question you ask yourself.
AI agent
Software that takes a goal, plans the steps, uses tools and keeps working until it is done. On the buyer's side it is the procurement of the future; on yours it maintains the plan.
The living account plan
Something closer to a brain than a binder: an account plan an AI maintains from raw sources, against your methodology, so it is current when you open it.
Copilot to autopilot
A copilot suggests, drafts and assists beside the human. An autopilot takes the controls on whole tasks. The line between them is drawn by judgement.
See the method run on one real account in three days: the One Page Proposition.