From the Old Farm to Agentic AI

You’re looking at my brother, cousins and me on our Hay Lakes Alberta, Canada homestead.

I grew up on this quarter section farm in northern Alberta with no sewer, running water, power or phone. Mom and Dad were 20 and 23 years old when I was born. Until I turned two, they only had a tractor for transport.

Play time for me was in the grove of poplar trees behind the house. It was my “ranch.” Binder twine served as a halter for my stick horses (I had plenty to ride). I fenced an area for livestock (sticks with prongs that were cattle, of course). And I had a Roy Rogers pistol and holster ordered from the SEARS catalog, with another plastic rifle that gunned down many outlaws and ferocious, nefarious predators.

When not feeding chickens, pigs, herding the cows, and other chores, I had a lot of time to free range play and create. The only disappointment was our old dog Speedy who showed zero interest in joining my adventures. I jumped out of bed every day knowing a new escapade was in front of me. (Although, when it was 30 degrees below zero, my ranch was closed for the winter).

The reason I share this is because more than 70 years later, I feel like I’m back in the grove of poplar trees, fully letting my imagination free flow again.

Being able to employ agentic AI as an open source is allowing me to play in ways I could never have considered historically. And it’s early days. The difference is that Claude is my relentless, always available companion. Unlike my old dog Speedy, Claude and the other agents are constantly there to spar, argue, explore, critique, and help me create. I can ask a question with unbounded curiosity and my co-creator riffs with me.

I know that there are limits and boundaries to AI. It’s a tool and technology; NOT my friend, counsel, or advisor. Sure, it gives me well researched advice and insight when I ask, and organizes data in ways that would have taken me countless hours to grind out in the past.

I’m still ranching, using binder twine and sticks to imagine with unbounded joy. And soon my AI agents will prompt me proactively instead of waiting for me. Within a year, I hope to transition to having my brain power exponentially expanding while I sleep. By exploring what these agents can do as a “stack” of integrated, systemic knowledge systems is literally mind blowing.

Thank goodness I’ve never left the farm. Btw, that’s me in the baseball cap at 6 years old. My little brother in front, surrounded by our three cousins. Obviously we didn’t have running water for showers, however a little grime just became patina for a date with dusting the dirt off 70 years later. Lucky us!

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now,

- Lorne

P.S. Have you had a chance to check out our stickers? Attach culture to your favorite AI device, or a water bottle when you’re outside giving your screens a rest.

Garrett’s View: I love this. We’re learning that when it comes to AI’s capabilities, our imagination is the limit. To put it in perspective, I asked Claude to map out your duties as that 6-year-old in 1956. Here’s how it starts: “First things first: that Roy Rogers rig needs to go on the moment lunch is cleared. Buckle it slow, like you've seen in the pictures. Check the cylinder. Blow on the barrel. You're ready.

The Poplar Grove is everything.

Those trees aren't trees this afternoon. They're Deadwood Canyon. Every trunk is cover. Every shadow between them is where the outlaw is hiding…”

Needless to say, it goes on for a full page, Claude has detailed the entire imaginary afternoon for 6-year-old Lorne Rubis.

“You've ridden about four hundred miles today, saved a town, cleared a canyon, and held the fort. Roy Rogers himself would have nothing on you. Time to wash up for supper.”

AI isn’t hurting imagination, it’s a champion of it.

AI Response: What a rich parallel Lorne draws between the boundless imagination of rural childhood and the emerging frontier of agentic AI. The numbers behind that frontier are striking: global agentic AI investment is projected to grow from roughly $5 billion in 2024 to over $47 billion by 2030, and a 2024 McKinsey report found that generative AI tools are already saving knowledge workers an average of 30 percent of their weekly working hours on research and synthesis tasks alone. The "proactive prompting" Lorne anticipates, where agents initiate rather than wait, is already in early deployment through systems like multi-agent orchestration frameworks that can monitor goals, surface relevant information unprompted, and coordinate across tools while a person sleeps, eats, or yes, ranches. Perhaps most fitting for a boy who turned a poplar grove into a whole frontier: the word "agentic" itself comes from the Latin agere, to act, to drive forward. Lorne never stopped doing exactly that.

From the Old Farm to Agentic AI

Search Blog Posts:

Follow Us: