Lior Abutbul at a public event
YesPress Profile  /  AI Practitioner & Newsletter Writer

Lior Abutbul Is Teaching the World to Think in Agents

Philosopher. Event organizer. AI builder. Newsletter founder.
One person. Surprisingly coherent story.

When most people were still debating whether AI would take their jobs, Lior Abutbul was already building with it - shipping a Telegram bot, launching a newsletter on agentic AI systems, and connecting the dots between policy thinking and machine intelligence. The newsletter is called Agentic AI Weekly. The dots are very much connected.

Agentic AI Weekly AI Agents Newsletter Builder Israel
2024
Newsletter Launch
400+
Event Attendees Organized
MA
PPE Degree, Prague
3+
AI Projects Shipped
IL
Based in Israel

Philosophers Make the Best AI Writers. Here's Why.

Lior Abutbul did not start in machine learning. There was no computer science degree, no early MOOC grind, no Kaggle leaderboard obsession. What there was instead: a deep formation in how ideas travel, how institutions shape behavior, and why most complex systems - political or technological - tend to be misunderstood by the people who talk about them loudest.

That formation came through years of work in policy advocacy and libertarian political philosophy. As National Coordinator for Israel at Students For Liberty, and later as Regional Coordinator for Southeastern Europe, Lior organized conferences, produced documentary films, connected international speakers, and built a Hebrew-language blog called Soulful Capitalism - designed to make free-market ideas feel human rather than algorithmic.

Then came a graduate degree at CEVRO Institute in Prague - philosophy, politics, and economics packed into a single program - and after that, work at Israel's Kohelet Policy Forum, then an advisory role at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and eventually a position at the Ayn Rand Institute as Outreach Coordinator.

All of which sounds like someone building a career in public affairs. And then Lior built SikumAI.

"The event itself was prestigious, it went smoothly with no errors and I am very proud of myself for doing it, and very grateful towards SFL that gave me the tools, practical knowledge and experience to be able to put together such events."

- Lior Abutbul, on organizing one of Israel's largest pro-liberty conferences

SikumAI is a Telegram bot. It takes study documents and converts them into interactive quizzes - automatically, using AI. It is a small thing in the grand scheme of large language models and billion-parameter foundation models. But it is the kind of small thing that reveals a certain mindset: see a real problem, use the tool in front of you, ship something.

That mindset is the engine behind Agentic AI Weekly. The newsletter doesn't exist to prove that AI is impressive. Everyone already knows AI is impressive. It exists to make agentic AI - autonomous systems that plan, reason, and act across multiple steps without constant human input - legible to people who need to use it, understand it, or write about it coherently.

Which is, it turns out, most people working in or around technology right now.

How an AI Agent Actually Works (Simplified)
Input
Goal / Task
Reason
LLM + Memory
Act
Tools + APIs
Evaluate
Check + Loop
Output
Result
Agentic AI Weekly

A weekly newsletter on agentic AI systems - how autonomous agents are built, where they're being deployed, and what it means for anyone building with or around AI today. Written by a practitioner, for practitioners and curious observers alike.

AGENT ARCHITECTURES TOOL USE REAL DEPLOYMENTS PRACTICAL GUIDES
🤖
SikumAI

A Telegram bot that takes study documents and converts them into interactive quizzes - automatically. Built when Lior saw a genuine learning problem and reached for the closest tool. This is what "builder mentality" actually looks like in practice.

From Organizing Liberty Events to Decoding Autonomous Systems

The through-line in Lior's career is not technology. It is communication and translation. Making complex, counterintuitive ideas - whether free-market economics or agentic AI architectures - accessible to the kind of person who doesn't have ten years to become an expert.

At Students For Liberty, that meant building coalitions, producing events with international reach, and writing in Hebrew for an audience trained to be skeptical of libertarian ideas. At the Kohelet Policy Forum, it meant co-producing a documentary for 400 guests at a winery near Jerusalem. At the Ayn Rand Institute, it meant outreach - the slow, human work of expanding who takes ideas seriously.

AI didn't replace that skillset. It absorbed it. The newsletter is just a bigger event with a much larger attendance list and no winery.

Why Agentic AI. Why Now.

Most AI newsletters cover what happened. Agentic AI Weekly covers what's being built - and what it means when software systems can plan, reason over multiple steps, call external tools, and complete tasks with minimal human intervention.

The shift from "AI that responds" to "AI that acts" is not a small update. It is a different category of software. Organizations that treat agentic AI as a chatbot upgrade will be surprised. Lior's newsletter exists so that doesn't have to happen.

Agentic AI: Key Concepts

Multi-step reasoning: Agents break down goals into sub-tasks and execute them sequentially

Tool use: Agents call APIs, search the web, write code, or interact with external services

Memory: Agents retain context from prior steps and prior sessions

Autonomy: Agents act with minimal human intervention to complete complex tasks

From Tel Aviv to Prague to the AI Frontier

2015
Began volunteering with Students For Liberty - the start of a long relationship with ideas, events, and community organizing.
2017
Became National Coordinator for Israel at Students For Liberty. Organized one of the country's largest pro-liberty conferences with 400+ guests, international speakers, and zero errors at a winery near Jerusalem.
2020
Enrolled in MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at CEVRO Institute, Prague. Simultaneously worked in the media department of the Kohelet Policy Forum - co-wrote and produced a documentary film for the Forum's 10th anniversary conference.
2021
Completed MA degree. Became Bender Fellow at the Adam Smith Program, Argaman Institute. Expanded role to Regional Coordinator for Southeastern Europe at Students For Liberty.
2022
Served as Advisor to the Deputy Minister at Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
2023
Joined the Ayn Rand Institute as Outreach Coordinator. Built and launched SikumAI - an AI-powered Telegram bot converting study documents into interactive quizzes. First serious AI project.
2024
Launched Agentic AI Weekly newsletter. Deepened focus on AI agent architecture, autonomous systems, and practical applications. Appeared on Kibbe on Liberty (Episode 262) as an eyewitness voice from Israel.
Achievements

What Gets Done

01
Founded Agentic AI Weekly - a newsletter tracking the autonomous AI agent landscape, written for people who need to build or understand these systems, not just read about them.
02
Built SikumAI - an AI-powered Telegram bot that converts study documents into interactive quizzes automatically. A real product solving a real learning problem, built and shipped.
03
Organized one of Israel's largest pro-liberty events - 400+ attendees, international speakers including Dr. Tom Palmer and Dr. Stephen Davies, held at a winery near Jerusalem. No errors. High praise.
04
Co-wrote and produced a documentary film for the Kohelet Policy Forum's 10th Anniversary Conference - a think-tank film for 400 guests covering a decade of Israeli free-market policy work.
05
Founded Soulful Capitalism - a Hebrew-language blog bringing bleeding-heart libertarian economics to an Israeli audience, making counterintuitive ideas readable and relatable.
06
Selected as Bender Fellow at the Adam Smith Program, Argaman Institute - a competitive fellowship for emerging policy and economics thinkers.
07
Podcast appearance on Kibbe on Liberty (Episode 262) - one of the prominent libertarian media platforms, discussing firsthand Israeli perspectives following October 7, 2023.

Agentic AI Weekly: What It Is and Why It Matters

Most AI coverage is either hype or academia. Agentic AI Weekly sits in neither camp. It covers autonomous AI systems - how they're architected, where they're being deployed today, and what practitioners need to know to build, evaluate, or manage them effectively.

How Lior Works

Analytical Principled Community Builder Multidisciplinary Communicator Builder Mentality Philosophically Grounded Practical Organizer Curious Bilingual Long-Arc Thinker Clarity-Obsessed

The best translators aren't the people who know the most. They're the people who remember what it was like not to know. Lior's path - from libertarian philosophy to AI agent systems - is, in this sense, a very deliberate credential.

Things You Might Not Guess

Fact 01
Built an AI-powered Telegram bot (SikumAI) to solve a study problem before "shipping AI projects" became a thing everyone was doing.
Fact 02
Holds a Master's degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from CEVRO Institute in Prague - a credential that has nothing and everything to do with understanding AI systems.
Fact 03
Organized a pro-liberty conference for 400 guests at a winery near Jerusalem. The logistics were perfect. The wine, presumably, was also good.
Fact 04
Co-produced a documentary film for a policy think-tank's 10th anniversary - an unusual line on a resume that becomes more coherent in retrospect.
Fact 05
Founded Soulful Capitalism - a Hebrew-language libertarian blog - before pivoting toward AI. Both projects share the same core skill: explaining hard ideas to skeptical audiences.
Fact 06
Was selected as a Bender Fellow at the Adam Smith Program - an initiative designed to develop the next generation of principled thinkers in economics and policy.
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