Cognitive Kin: How to Work, Win, and Make Meaning with Agentic AI

USA TODAY BESTSELLER

Now that AI has a will, it’s up to us to find a way. For decades, we built software that did what it was told—and nothing else. Agentic AI breaks this bargain: systems that remember, reason, and pursue goals. They arrive less like code and more like colleagues—tireless, fast, and, like any new hire, occasionally in need of supervision.

In Cognitive Kin, Christophe Kolb and Jan Rosen map the threshold where artificial intelligence stops being a feature and becomes a workforce. Drawing on firsthand experience at the frontier of agentic AI, they show how digital labor becomes viable, why org charts give way to networks of intent, and how leadership shifts to orchestration. They translate the machinery—memory, feedback loops, tool use—into plain language, then follow the shockwave into strategy, culture, and governance.

This isn’t tomorrow’s speculation. It’s a present-tense transition that is reshaping the meaning of work and creating new sources of value. The advantage will belong to firms that learn to think with thinking things—working alongside intelligent systems without outsourcing judgment, meaning, or responsibility.

Dr. Christophe Kolb is the founder and CEO of Taller, a global accelerator for digital transformation that brings AI and deep tech from incubation to large-scale deployment. He works with Fortune 500 companies and ambitious enterprises to build “centaur workforces”: hybrid teams of human specialists and AI agents that redefine how organizations create, deliver, and capture value. A longtime traveler across the frontiers of advanced technology—from neural networks and decentralized systems to quantum computing—Kolb holds a Ph.D. in Computation & Neural Systems from Caltech and a degree in Physics & Philosophy from Oxford.

Jan Rosen is Chief Innovation and Transformation Officer at Taller, where he designs and deploys agentic AI architectures that change how organizations think, decide, and deliver. Before joining Taller, he led major engineering efforts at Venmo and PayPal, building the invisible machinery behind everyday payments and in-store experiences, and driving major platform modernization. A systems engineer by training and temperament, he moves easily from code to culture, helping enterprise leaders translate advanced strategy into running software. Rosen holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science from Chalmers University of Technology.