Apps, Agents, and Aggregation
AI is evolving from something you do on your computer to something that does computer things for you on your behalf. Meta’s Muse, SpaceX’s Grok Bot, Microsoft’s (relaunched) Copilot, and now OpenAI’s Dots are mass-market versions of the more powerful agents we saw earlier this year. (E.g., OpenClaw.) Ben Thompson believes a major shift is at hand: traditional UI is “dead.” I’m not convinced. Most organizations will still want to own their customers’ experience. See, for example, GM, Tesla, and Rivian’s resistance to integrating Apple’s CarPlay into their vehicles despite consumer desire for the technology.
The Dot and the Swarm
Does AI eliminate the principal-agent problem? Ethan Mollick suggests we might not be fully there — but his initial assumptions about how much managerial steering AI needs haven’t proved out. And we’re entering a new phase now that end users have access to independent agents that can control computers on their behalf. What unexpected consequences might arise? My take: we may be shifting to a new level of management challenge, from specifying agentic operations to directing and monitoring emergent “swarm” behavior.
Personal Computing 2.0
I’ve seen a spate of posts recently from folks who are excited about the new capabilities for personal computing that AI opens up. For example, it’s now easier than ever to build dedicated “just for one” software applications that do exactly what you want. This post from Josh Albrecht offers a vision for a new era of personal computing that I find compelling: data ownership for more useful outcomes from agentic systems. But this view is very far from mainstream: I expect the vast majority of people will want to interact less with computers now that AI can do it on their behalf.
How Pew Research Center uses AI
Trust is foundational for Pew, so they’ve published a pithy and clear statement on how they are — and are not — using AI in their work. TL;DR: humans answer the surveys, humans decide what to study, humans write the reports. But that doesn’t mean there’s no role for AI. Different orgs will land at different ends of the AI adoption spectrum. Pew’s public level of clarity and intentionality is inspirational.
OpenAI Dots
Meta’s Muse app shot to the top of the iOS App Store over the last couple of weeks. At a minimum, people are clearly intrigued by the idea of agents doing stuff on their behalf. I’m not sure what to do with this myself, since I enjoy working with computers directly. Still, I want to experiment — and to put it bluntly, I don’t trust Meta with the level of access to my data these autonomous agents require. So I’ll test OpenAI’s take on these tools over the next few weeks, and will report back. Interesting times!