Bluetooth. I think AirTags will most likely use some combination of bluetooth and the new U1 chip included in the iPhone 11 Pro which should hopefully give it more granularity than a plain old bluetooth tracker would.
Mind you I have never tried Tile, so they may be better in that regard, but there is only so much you can do off a single bluetooth signal
I was thinking of Tesla Radar [1] which allows people to track Model 3 via Bluetooth (cannot be disabled by user).