06-07-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
AI Is a Boon to ‘High Agency' People
We can't all be Mark Zuckerberg, dropping out of Harvard and creating a trillion-dollar company. But what if there were a million Zuckerbergs, or 100 million, all capable of doing amazing things? These 'high-agency' people are being unleashed, Gian Segato, of the artificial-intelligence company Replit, said in an interview last week. He helped design AI tools to let you 'turn your ideas into apps' using natural language instead of having to write code. Replit is taking off like a roadrunner, from $10 million in annual recurring revenue six months ago to $100 million today. Cursor AI and other competitors are experiencing similar growth.
Mr. Segato defines high-agency people as 'those with a curiosity' and a personality trait one might call defiance, who 'challenge the status quo and believe the world around them is changeable'—and then change it. They 'struggle to be contained.' High-agency folks have always been around but either had to become specialists or hire specialists to get things done.
