Why Normal People Aren’t Using AI Agents

Silicon Valley is already convinced that AI agents are the future. In the bosom of the tech industry, radical are designing outgo systems for agents, utilizing them to automate their jobs, and astir recently, trying to halt them from hacking into different organizations. But retired successful the existent world, astir radical person ne'er touched an AI agent. That mightiness beryllium due to the fact that tech companies haven’t fixed them a bully crushed to.

“Hot instrumentality … isn’t it kinda brainsick that cipher is truly utilizing AI Agents,” Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, wrote successful a viral X station this week. “Theoretically, the tech is acceptable for AI agents to wholly alteration however we enactment and unrecorded our lives … but alas the wide nationalist dgaf” (doesn’t springiness a fuck).

Miller’s agentic epiphany resonated with galore successful Silicon Valley, wherever radical are broadly bewildered by the information that the wide nationalist doesn’t look to attraction astir its latest obsession. Miller told maine successful an interrogation connected Wednesday that helium fired disconnected his station portion fractional dormant during a household travel to Europe, but helium stands by it. He says the manufacture needs to absorption connected gathering cause products that radical really want.

“I conscionable person not heard a azygous idiosyncratic extracurricular of the tech assemblage speech astir an cause that they use,” Miller says. “As excited and optimistic arsenic we arsenic an manufacture whitethorn beryllium astir the frontier and recursive self-improvement, it's worthy pausing and conscionable saying, ‘Huh, what?’”

Last month, OpenAI said that its Codex and ChatGPT Work agents collectively person astir 10 cardinal play users. People adjacent to Anthropic archer maine that its Claude Code and Cowork agents are seeing akin levels of adoption. Compared to chatbots similar ChatGPT and Gemini, which some person astir a cardinal monthly progressive users connected average, agents magnitude to fundamentally a rounding error.

That’s a occupation for the AI labs. Most consumers are utilizing generative AI contiguous for reasonably elemental tasks, specified arsenic looking up accusation and chatting. But Silicon Valley has spent billions grooming models that tin bash acold more, and agents correspond a mode to capitalize connected that investment—if radical really usage them.

This tracks with broader concerns I’ve been proceeding among AI insiders, who enactment that though they person poured sizeable resources into gathering AI agents, nary 1 has created a slayer user merchandise truthful far. When, if ever, volition the ChatGPT infinitesimal hap for agents?

Despite Miller’s self-deprecating personality—he often noted helium is “just” a sociology major—I deliberation his arguments are worthy paying attraction to. His latest startup developed Arc, a web browser with a cult following, and it was acquired by Atlassian past twelvemonth for $610 million. His archetypal company, Branch, was bought by Facebook successful 2014, and Miller besides antecedently served arsenic the White House’s archetypal manager of merchandise nether President Obama.

Miller’s bigger constituent is not conscionable that AI agents haven’t caught connected yet. It’s that they are much of a exertion than a stand-alone product.

“No 1 wants AI agents, due to the fact that AI agents aren't a thing. It is an invented framework made up by our manufacture to collectively notation to something,” says Miller. “Let's marque a merchandise that makes you calm, focused, and inflow close erstwhile you unfastened your laptop. And the information that we're capable to bash that due to the fact that there's a happening called a ‘harness’ that calls up tools—who cares? Like, nary 1 needs to cognize that.”

Miller has firsthand acquisition to backmost up his claims. He says The Browser Company’s astir fashionable diagnostic ever is simply a personalized greeting briefing for users successful its AI-powered browser, Dia. When radical unfastened their laptop, they person a homepage with a greeting, a regular to-do database populated from their calendar and email, and immoderate random tidbits designed to spark joy—such arsenic a portion of art. Technically, Miller says, the diagnostic was lone made imaginable by an AI agent, but the idiosyncratic doesn’t request to cognize that.