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

For decades, we built software that did what it was told--and nothing else. In Cognitive Kin, Christophe Kolb and Jan Rosen map the threshold where AI becomes a colleague--tireless, fast, and, like any new hire, occasionally in need of supervision—to reshape the meaning of work and create new sources of value. 

Drawing on firsthand experience at the frontier of agentic AI, the authors 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 is a present-tense transition, and the advantage will belong to firms that learn how to work alongside intelligent systems without outsourcing judgement, 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. Kolb holds a Ph.D. in Computation & Neural Systems from Caltech and a degree in Physics & Philosophy from Oxford. He lives with his family in New Canaan. 

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, driving major platform modernization. Rosen holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science from Chalmers University of Technology.