The short version: When an AI agent gets a task 80% right, you can patch the last 20% by hand and ship today, or fix the instruction behind it and never touch that task again. The patch is faster now. The fix compounds. Most people, me included, pick the patch too often, because the economics that should govern the choice have changed and our instincts haven't caught up.
Not all business relationships do the same job. Research shows which ones survive the agentic economy, and which were always just expensive due diligence.
Agents won't kill business relationships. They'll sort them. The ones doing low-value information work will quietly become unnecessary. The ones doing the hard human jobs will become rarer, and more valuable.
Five things AI can't replace: trust, context, distribution, taste, and liability. These aren't product categories. They're structural layers that become more valuable as AI gets better, not less.