When AI Does Your Grunt Work

When AI Does Your Grunt Work

We spilled some digital ink both yesterday and the day before about “agentic AI.” But it might still be too abstract, too airy-fairy, to wrap your mind around.

Let’s remedy that today — with the help of pre-2026 AI.

I plugged the following inquiry into the Perplexity AI engine: “Please furnish a vivid and recent example of agentic AI that would resonate for a ‘normie’ whose only familiarity with AI is LLM chatbots.”

Perplexity spat out a scenario in which you’re flying home from a work trip — only to see your flight cancelled. Before you even open the airline app or start schlepping toward a help desk, an AI agent does the following…

• Notices the cancellation in your email/airline app
• Checks your calendar to see you have an important meeting tomorrow morning
• Searches all possible rebooking options: earlier flights, nearby airports, even train options plus Uber to get home on time
• Looks up your preferences it already learned (“won’t do red-eyes,” “OK with a layover if it gets home earlier”)
• Decides the best plan: Rebook you on a different airline tonight from a nearby airport, books a rideshare to that airport and finds a hotel near your destination in case of further delay.

Then it actually books the flight for you — using your credit card on file and applying your frequent-flyer miles. Oh, and it cancels your previous hotel booking and notifies your colleagues on Slack or Teams that while your original flight was cancelled, you’ll still make that important meeting.

Plugging the same query into Elon Musk’s Grok engine, I got the following:

You open your laptop, fire up the Claude desktop app (Anthropic’s tool) and type one casual sentence:

“Hey Cowork, my Downloads folder is a total disaster—sort everything into folders by file type and date, pull out any receipts or invoices and make a clean spreadsheet summary of what’s there with totals if it’s money stuff. Oh, and flag anything that looks like a bill I haven’t paid.”

Then you walk away to grab coffee.

Cowork then scans every file, drags and drops them, identifies PDFs that look like invoices and builds an Excel spreadsheet detailing them. Once you’re done swilling your coffee after 15 minutes or so, it’s all done for you — even flagging three unpaid bills.

Sorta funny that Grok is doing free advertising for a competitor, but whatevs…

OK now does the potential of agentic AI seem more real?

And it’s come to the fore only in the last several weeks with the advent of an AI agent called OpenClaw.

Little wonder that AI agents were all the talk this week at Nvidia’s annual GTC gathering in San Jose.

It was a must-see event for Paradigm AI authority James Altucher and his team — on site in California. Yesterday, fresh from the event, they took part in our Tech Turning Point 2026 online forum.

There, James explained how pre-2026 AI was simply an “ask-answer” proposition. AI agents differ in two huge ways: “An AI agent is working around the clock — and it’s taking action.”

“Ask-answer uses only a certain amuont of AI — a certain amount of bandwidth and computational power. But when you’re continuously doing something and taking action you need 10,000 times more computational power.

“The computational power required, and the companies that are delivering that power, are really important.” Nvidia, yes, but at the same time, “people don’t realize there are 80 suppliers of the components in every GPU [chip],” James says. And that’s what I’m really interested in.”

AI agents were only one topic on the agenda for our Tech Turning Point 2026 event yesterday. Our experts covered the gamut from robots to outer space.

And no, there was no attached sales pitch. Just two hours and 35 minutes of insights and actionable guidance — our way of saying thanks to you for being a Paradigm Press customer. Click here to start watching.

Is Oil $95… Or $150?

“Has anyone suggested the price of oil is being manipulated in the futures markets?” a reader writes.

“The price as I write is just above $95. To me, this seems so faraway from pricing in the current and future uncertainty in the gulf.”

Short answer: Yes. The Financial Times says only yesterday, the price of crude coming out of Oman soared to a record $150 a barrel. Never mind that those barrels depart from ports that lie outside the Strait of Hormuz!

Chalk it up to “intense competition for the small volumes still leaving the Middle East,” says the paper.

Among those who agree with the reader’s thesis is the Portuguese author and one-time diplomat Bruno Macaes…

Checking our screens — for whatever it’s worth — a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up 2.4% to $98.93.

But for nearly every other asset class, it’s a sea of red today.

The S&P 500 is down nearly two-thirds of a percent to 6,674 — giving up about half of its gains the last two days. The Nasdaq is down just over a half percent, the Dow down about 1%.

But for a real drubbing, look to the precious metals — gold down 2.8% to $4,863 and silver down 3.4% to $76.45, a one-month low.

Crypto’s been caught up in the selling too. Bitcoin sits at $71,386 — the move over $73,000 couldn’t stick. Ethereum has pulled back under $2,200.

The big economic number of the day is wholesale prices — up 0.7% between January and February. Literally no one among dozens of economists polled by Econoday expected an increase of over 0.3%.

No doubt that will feed into consumer inflation next month — on top of whatever’s more costly because of the war.

As such, there’s almost zero chance the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates today. The Fed’s decision will be rendered by the time you read this; we’ll follow up tomorrow.

Supply-Chain Snags, Iran War Edition

As for the war…

No, the Strait of Hormuz is not open. Tehran still has full control over who may pass.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes are now targeting Iran’s vast South Pars natural gas field. As such, Tehran says it’s within its rights to carry out airstrikes on energy infrastructure in the Gulf sheikdoms.

The longer Hormuz remains closed, the more likely we face COVID-level disruptions to the supply chain.

Certainly that’s already the case in large swaths of Asia. Diesel shortages in Thailand. Steel production interrupted in India, for want of natural gas. Today and every Wednesday declared a public holiday in Sri Lanka, just so people won’t burn fuel going to work.

Speaking of India, look at the threat to its fertilizer supply coming from the gulf…

North America is not immune: We’re hearing murmurs from the Farm Belt about how fertilizer is now so costly that many corn farmers might opt to plant soybeans this year instead — because bean plants more or less make their own fertilizer.

Reminder: Among many other uses, corn is what makes the ethanol that goes into your gas tank.

As for the view from the White House…

To be fair, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the reason it’s “the last of our concerns” is that “we are very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule.”

If that makes you feel any better…

Tariff Fallout: Costco Customer Sues

This tariff refund thing is getting complicated.

As you probably know, the Supreme Court struck down the legal justification the Trump administration was using for much of its tariff regime — while dodging the question of whether companies that paid the tariffs were now entitled to refunds.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are now appealing to the U.S. Court of International Trade for refunds — including Costco Wholesale (COST).

Here’s the plot twist: A Costco customer is suing the company, demanding that shoppers get a cut of any refunds the company collects. The suit filed by Matthew Sockov says it would amount to “unjust enrichment” if Costco recouped its tariff costs twice — “from customers through elevated pricing and from the government.”

"The truly injured parties possess no direct avenue for redress," says the suit filed in federal court in Illinois. Sockov is asking the court to declare his case a class action.

The BBC asked Costco for comment — but none was forthcoming.

Perhaps that’s because the company thinks even addressing the issue is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. On an earnings call this month, CEO Ron Vachris said it’s still fuzzy “what refunds, if any, will be received.”

Stay tuned…

Mailbag: Escorts, Swan Song

The subject line of Monday’s edition elicited a couple of reader remarks, including this one…

“Given the president's well-documented personal habits, maybe not the best wording for the 5 Bullets headline...? 

[It was done very deliberately and you know that…]

“I found myself thinking, OMG, it's not bad enough that he's started a war in the Middle East, but now he's after a Desert Stormy...”

[RIM SHOT “I’m here all week, make sure to try the veal…”]

“Thank you, Emily, God bless you on your next endeavor,” says one of many replies after Emily’s swan song yesterday on the weekday 5 Bullets.

“I can’t believe it’s been nine years!” says another. “I am a FAITHFUL reader and appreciate all of your work over the years.”

“Thank you to Emily Clancy for years of well-written and insightful bullets,” adds a third. “I've absorbed a lot of ammunition and enjoyed every minute. P.S. This is my first feedback to your newsletter, and it seems fitting.

“I don't usually respond to things at Paradigm (I'm a relatively new member),” says one more, “but I wanted to tell you that I have always enjoyed your 5 Bullets. Best of luck on your future role.”

As Emily mentioned here yesterday, she’s not going far — taking on a new role within our Jim Rickards unit. And you’ll still hear from her in our Saturday wrap-up edition.

As for my own sendoff, I’ll save that for the end of the week on Friday. In the meantime, catch you tomorrow…