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AI has been subtly influencing us for years, but a new generation of vastly more capable technology is now emerging. These systems, the authors write, aren't just tools. They're actors that increasingly will be behaving autonomously, making consequential decisions, and shaping social and economic outcomes. No longer in the background of our lives, they now interact directly with us, and their outputs can be strikingly humanlike and seemingly all-knowing. They are capable of exceeding human benchmarks at everything from language understanding to coding. And these advances, driven by material breakthroughs in areas such as large language models (LLMs) and machine learning, are happening so quickly that they are confounding even their own creators. For all the wizardry and seductions of these new systems, however, our future can still be in our own hands. In this article the authors offer guidance for managing their effects in the workplace, looking for increased value in that which is uniquely human, and aligning messaging and business practices with a changing, and challenging, debate.

Power clearly isn't what it used to be. We see Goliaths being toppled by Davids all around us, from the networked drivers of Uber to the crowdfunded creatives of Kickstarter. But it's difficult to understand what power actually is in this changed world, and how to gain more of it. Two fresh voices to HBR--Jeremy Heimans, cofounder of Purpose and Avaaz, and Henry Timms, director of the 92nd Street Y in New York--offer a framework for organizations seeking to effectively use the two distinct forces of "old power" and "new power." Old power, the authors argue, works like a currency. It is held by few and is zero-sum. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. Like water or electricity, it's most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it. New power actors differ from old power players along two dimensions: the models they use to accumulate and exercise power and the values they embrace. Some enterprises, like Facebook, have new power models but don't seem to embrace the values; others, like Patagonia, have new power values but wield their influence using traditional old power models. This big-picture piece examines the underlying dynamics at work and looks at how power is really shifting: who has it, how it is distributed, and where it is heading.