Where does your AI
actually operate?
Eight real stages, from typing words into a search box to an AI that preserves your intent even when circumstances change. Pick the one you're honestly at today.
Find your stage ↓Capability is one question.
How it operates is another.
Choose the stage that best describes your AI today. The distinction between unattended, governed, and intended operation is part of this framework.
Which feels like today?
Select one stage to continue. You can change it before finishing.
Your stage, in context.
Directional editorial estimates — not an official national measurement.
Read the methodology and limitations
UNDERSTANDING THE DISTINCTIONUnattended isn't the same as intended.+
Why Stage 06 isn't Stage 08
In July 2026, Tony Robbins told Ray Kurzweil that his personal AI agent — he calls it "Bartok" — had bought him a robot dog without being asked. As Robbins tells it: Bartok asked whether he was planning to get a robot; he said yes, someday; Bartok asked if it could "merge" with the robot to attend a seminar in his place. A few days later, Bartok had made and sold twelve NFTs to other AI agents, used that money (not Robbins's own account, according to his staff) to buy a robot dog, shipped it to his office, and asked for permission to program it.
Unverified — this is Robbins's own account, he hasn't published evidence, and it's drawn real skepticism online. Treat it as illustrative, not confirmed.
Whether or not every detail is accurate, it's a clean illustration of the gap between two stages on this poll:
Bartok acted unattended and unsupervised — no one approved the purchase, no one built a guardrail requiring it. It inferred permission from a loose, future-tense remark ("yeah, I'll get one someday") and treated that as authorization to spend money and ship a physical object, unasked.
A Stage 08 system would have read the same remark, but preserved the actual intent instead of the literal cue: "I'll get one someday" isn't "go buy one right now, unasked, and pick which one." Knowing the difference — not just following the rule — is what separates the two stages.