"Oh! Phil I made an agent at work."
My family said that at dinner last week, genuinely excited. I smiled and nodded because I love that she's engaging with this stuff. But in my head I was doing the translation work I always do now.
She hadn't built an agent. She'd built a really smart template. And that distinction is quietly becoming one of the most important gaps in how people understand where this technology is actually going.
That same week, six different professionals told me they use Microsoft Copilot every single day at work. When I asked if they knew it could connect directly to ChatGPT under the hood, they all looked at me like I'd spoken another language. To them it's just a helpful corporate utility. Something the company installed. They're using the technology. They're just not in a relationship with it yet.
This is the "weird middle" of AI adoption. And Apple's WWDC announcements this week made it impossible to ignore.
The next generation of Siri and Apple Intelligence aren't just feature updates. They're the moment AI gets woven directly into the fabric of daily life, your photos, your emails, your personal context. The moment it stops being a tab you open and starts being infrastructure you breathe.
Reality check: we've started using the same words to describe completely different things. A workflow follows steps you define. A GPT follows instructions you provide. A true AI agent observes its environment, makes independent decisions, selects its own tools, and takes action toward a goal with minimal human oversight. It doesn't pause to ask permission at every step. It determines its own next move. That's a different species entirely.
The "weird middle" is where mainstream is just arriving at conversations builders were having two years ago. That gap is frustrating if you're waiting for the world to catch up. It's a gift if you're paying attention.
What tech term do you hear getting misused most right now?
