AI isn’t the next electricity or Wi-Fi. It’s the next water.
In his 2015 book Water 4.0, David Sedlak reminds us how revolutionary running water was. For most of history, people hauled buckets from rivers or wells. Then plumbing arrived, and suddenly clean water flowed into every home. It transformed health, hygiene, and even how homes and cities were designed. And soon, people stopped thinking of it as technology. It just became part of life.
Sedlak says the next revolution in water won’t come from bigger plants alone, but from combining central systems with more decentralized solutions: rooftop capture, neighborhood recycling, local reuse. Resilience comes from distributing capabilities, letting water flow to where it’s needed most.
This reflects what Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang calls hybrid AI: public, personal, and enterprise AI working together. These forms of AI will coexist and complement each other to fit different needs for different customers in efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, security and privacy protection, and sustainability.
That’s exactly how we see the future of AI. Not locked in one cloud, not trapped in a single device, but balanced across the cloud, edge, and every device you use. Sometimes local for privacy and speed, sometimes cloud for scale, always working together. Like water, AI should flow seamlessly across your environment, becoming exactly what you need in the moment. Invisible when you don’t need it, indispensable when you do.
The quiet constant: ambient intelligence
And this is where the idea of ambient intelligence comes in. Imagine an AI that doesn’t sit in a single app or silo but instead flows everywhere you are. It listens when you ask, notices when you don’t, and surfaces the right insights at the right time. It removes the friction between intent and action. This is the next stage: AI as a quiet, constant companion across your digital environment. It’s always-on, always-adaptive, always there when you need it most.
Our vision means one AI that integrates intuitively across multiple devices. A personal intelligence that flows across your PC, phone, tablet, and wearable, continuously enriched by each of these endpoints, so your context evolves and adapts with you. It’s balanced across the cloud, edge and device: local when speed and privacy matter, cloud when scale is required. Most importantly, it’s more secure and always under your control.
This is what Yuanqing has described as the Personal AI twin: a digital counterpart that continuously learns and adapts to fully understand your needs, preferences, and behaviors. The same principle applies to the Enterprise AI twin, trained on organizational data and policies to reflect its goals and priorities. Together, these twins ensure that ambient intelligence is both everywhere and uniquely yours.
And I want to emphasize again the security of these tools and how we protect privacy. We treat trust as the mindset and foundation for every innovation and solution Lenovo develops. Our vision for ambient intelligence is no exception.
The five behaviors of ambient intelligence
And when intelligence flows across our lives, it shows up in the moments that matter most.
The best technology doesn’t call attention to itself. Like water through pipes, it adapts to your needs in the moment: quiet, constant, and indispensable. These are the moments when AI stops being technology you use and starts feeling like part of life: anticipating before you ask, responding in context, turning intent into action, catching you up on what you missed, and creating spaces where you can fully immerse yourself in work, play, or creativity.
We’ve mapped out five archetypical behaviors – proactive, reactive, interactive, retrospective, and immersive – that define when intelligence shifts from being a tool you open to a companion you live and work with.
Living with ambient intelligence
Your on-device AI is always on, at times proactive in the background, flagging your to-do list and priority tasks. On the way to work, it may remind you about the call you scheduled but forgot to confirm, even drafting talking points so you arrive fully prepared.
Throughout the day, it’s also reactive, responding instantly to your queries. Think of it as intelligence that adapts in context, whatever’s in front of you. You point your phone or move your cursor over an item, and it gives you additional relevant information about it.
When you need to move something forward, it becomes interactive. You might hand off a draft to colleagues, set a reminder, or sync updates across devices, and it happens seamlessly. You don’t need to manage the mechanics. Your intent becomes action.
If you’ve stepped away for a meeting, it becomes retrospective. It summarizes unread messages, highlights three project updates, and even replays the last few minutes of the meeting you had to leave early. You’re caught up in moments, ready for the next thing you to do.
And when you need some peace and quiet, the fifth behavior is key. It creates an immersive space where distractions quiet, and “flow mode” takes over your devices. Your environment shifts to support your work, play, or creativity. Whether gaming or drafting a presentation, you feel more present, more capable, more in the zone.
By the end of the day, you’ve lived alongside a type of intelligence that flows continuously across your devices, adapting at every step.
One AI, many devices: the Super Agent vision
The ever-present AI reality is closer than you think. We already have strong foundations in moto ai, Lenovo AI Now, Smart Connect, and more, having integrated capabilities where intelligence is embedded in your devices, connected across platforms, and balanced between cloud and edge.
Tomorrow, those pieces converge into something larger: a unified AI layer that integrates perception, action, and presence across devices. This unification is closely aligned with what Lenovo CTO Tolga Kurtoglu has described as the AI Super Agent, a cognitive operating system that orchestrates multiple AI domain-specific agents.
In the personal sphere, that same orchestrated intelligence means one AI that understands what you need, when and where you need it (that is, perception). It then acts on your behalf, in the cloud, across devices, and with your services. But just as importantly, it’s always present via the five archetypal behaviors — a virtual presence intimately connected with individuals and organizations, like an extension of yourself with your intellect, working as your twin. It continuously adapts to your context and seamlessly integrates into your daily routines. Our aspiration is one AI, multiple devices: a super agent that can see what you see, hear what you hear, think as you would think, and act as you would act – all with your permission. Over time, it will get smarter and more like the user, eventually becoming a Personal AI twin.
That’s the opportunity ahead for AI. To stop being something you open in an app, and start becoming something that flows across every moment, adapting to you, balancing across cloud, edge, and device. It’s the shift from tools to presence.
And as Bruce Lee once said, “Be like water making its way through cracks.” Water adapts to its environment, takes the shape of what holds it, and flows to where it’s needed most. That’s exactly how we believe AI should work: invisible when you don’t need it, indispensable when you do.