Humans have automated tasks for centuries. Now, AI companies see a path to profit in harnessing our love of efficiency, and they\u2019ve got a name for their solution: agents.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
AI agents are autonomous programs that perform tasks, make decisions, and interact with environments with little human input, and they\u2019re the focus of every major company working on AI today. Microsoft has \u201cCopilots\u201d designed to help businesses automate things like customer service and administrative tasks. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian recently outlined a pitch for six different AI productivity agents<\/a>, and Google DeepMind just poached OpenAI\u2019s co-lead on its AI video product<\/a>, Sora, to work on developing a simulation for training AI agents<\/a>. Anthropic released a feature for its AI chatbot, Claude<\/a>, that will let anyone create their own \u201cAI assistant.\u201d OpenAI includes agents as level 2 in its 5-level approach to reach AGI, or human-level artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Obviously, computing is full of autonomous systems. Many people have visited a website with a pop-up customer service bot, used an automated voice assistant feature like Alexa Skills, or written a humble IFTTT script<\/a>. But AI companies argue \u201cagents\u201d \u2014 you\u2019d better not call them bots \u2014\u00a0are different. Instead of following a simple, rote set of instructions, they believe agents will be able to interact with environments, learn from feedback, and make decisions without constant human input. They could dynamically manage tasks like making purchases, booking travel, or scheduling meetings, adapting to unforeseen circumstances and interacting with systems that could include humans and other AI tools.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Artificial intelligence companies hope that agents will provide a way to monetize powerful, expensive AI models. Venture capital is pouring into AI agent startups that promise to revolutionize how we interact with technology. Businesses envision a leap in efficiency, with agents handling everything from customer service to data analysis. For individuals, AI companies are pitching a new era of productivity where routine tasks are automated, freeing up time for creative and strategic work. The endgame for true believers is to create AI that is a true partner, not just a tool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhat you really want,\u201d OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told MIT Technology Review<\/em><\/a> earlier this year, \u201cis just this thing that is off helping you.\u201d Altman described the killer app for AI as a \u201csuper-competent colleague that knows absolutely everything about my whole life, every email, every conversation I\u2019ve ever had, but doesn\u2019t feel like an extension.\u201d It can tackle simple tasks instantly, Altman added, and for more complex ones, it will attempt them but return with questions if needed. Tech companies have been trying to automate the personal assistant since at least the 1970s, and now, they promise they\u2019re finally getting close.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At an OpenAI press event ahead of the company\u2019s annual Dev Day, head of developer experience Romain Huet demonstrated the company\u2019s new Realtime API with an assistant agent. Huet gave the agent a budget and some constraints for buying 400 chocolate-covered strawberries and asked it to place an order via a phone call to a fictitious shop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The service is similar to a Google reservation-making bot called Duplex from 2018. But that bot could only handle the simplest scenarios \u2014 it turned out a quarter of its calls were actually made by humans<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n