Most adults reading this will have lived through several waves of technology-driven change already during their lifetimes. The arrival of the internet, smartphones and cloud-based computing all changed our lives in significant ways.
The next wave of change will be driven by AI agents—next-generation AI capable of taking action on our behalf and carrying out complex tasks without human intervention.
As with technological revolutions, the impact will be felt first by business and industry. But make no mistake—the way we spend our free time, schedule our daily activities, spend our money, and communicate with friends will be changed forever, too.
So here’s an overview of some of the ways that I think we will see this happen as agents create perhaps the most profound change yet in the way humans work with machines and technology.
First Of All, What Is An AI Agent?
A quick refresher for those out-of-the-loop: Most people are familiar with generative AI, like ChatGPT, which creates text and images based on prompts. AI agents can be seen as an evolutionary leap forward—they don’t just respond to prompts; they take action, completing complex tasks with minimal intervention from us.
For example, ChatGPT can generate a recipe based on your preferences. An AI agent could also order ingredients, coordinate smart kitchen appliances, and refine the process over time. Seen as the next frontier in AI, agents are generating huge excitement.
Agents are here today—tools are becoming available from leading AI developers, including OpenAI’s Operator, Amazon’s Q, Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Project Astra. And while these are mainly targeted at enterprise users, applications designed to help us with everyday activities are inevitably on their way.
Everyday AI Agents
How will these agents fit into everyday life, and what sort of jobs will they help us with? Well, in theory, most of the tasks that we currently accomplish now using search engines and apps could eventually be done for us by agents.
This could include online shopping, personal fitness, travel planning, managing our social calendars and controlling the ever-growing number of connected gadgets and appliances in our lives.
Booking a trip, for example, can involve time-consuming searches across different search engines, online markets and airline or hotel websites in order to get the best deals. This is all work that an agent could carry out much more quickly and efficiently than a human.
Don’t forget, the agent is “always on,” too—so if your flight is canceled or delayed, it will know about it, and it will help you with backup plans and contingencies.
If you’re a gadget fan like me, it can easily get to the point that controlling all your smart home devices involves navigating a confusing pile of apps and remotes. To an AI agent, this wouldn’t be an issue at all. We will rely on them as “middlemen” to interact on our behalf with all the other less intelligent technology in our homes.
AI smart assistants like Siri and Alexa will get a whole lot smarter when they become AI agents. Rather than simply answering questions and acting as very overpowered timers and camera monitors, they will proactively manage your schedule, learn about you by conversing and working alongside you, and help you work towards achieving long-term goals.
Does anyone else sometimes gets frustrated by the number of messenger apps and platforms these days and long for the old days of a single inbox where everyone could contact you?
And AI agents will sit at the top of the heap of comms and messenger apps that we all live with today, making sure important messages get to us no matter how they’re sent and screening against unwanted and nuisance communications.
In fact, I predict you will soon be able to use agents to automate just about anything we currently do on our smartphones – shopping, ordering taxis, booking tables at restaurants, interacting with banking and payment service providers, or creating and publishing social media content.
Before long, I expect agentic AI technology to profoundly impact the way that humans interact with technology. The change will be no less dramatic than the arrival of the internet. While that augments our knowledge by putting all of the information in the world at our fingertips, agents augment our ability to take action.
Autonomous Robots That Don’t Need Humans? What Could Go Wrong?
Well, unfortunately, quite a bit.
The very concept of enabling machines to make decisions and take action without input from us clearly throws up a number of red flags. From the obvious, like hoping it won’t spend all our money unwisely, to the more insidious – can we really be sure it’s acting with our best interests at heart?
One of the key ways that AI agents are different from earlier AIs is that they can interact with external systems. Unlike chatbots like ChatGPT, for example, which have to be given access through an API, agents can learn to access and use external systems by themselves.
Operator, for example – an AI agent developed by OpenAI – uses computer vision to understand what’s happening on a computer screen. This means it can log into an online store and make purchases on a user’s behalf (although apparently, it still can’t complete captchas.)
While this is clearly a hugely exciting opportunity to save humans from the drudgery of day-to-day and mundane tasks, it’s clear we have to be confident that safeguards are in place.
There are potentially more dramatic consequences than simply having our bank accounts drained by our new agentic companions, too. There are still questions about the long-term impact that reliance on AI will have on human planning and decision-making skills if we lean too heavily on them.
And what measures need to be put in place to ensure that by carrying out the instructions of their owners, they aren’t inadvertently harming or inconveniencing others? Making it possible to create armies of virtual shoppers that will buy up sought-after concert tickets to resell for profit, for example, or predict and capitalize on food and medicine shortages might not make the world a better place.
No technology as transformative as this comes without challenges, though. And ultimately, AI agents are set to usher in enormous change, which will be evident in many aspects of our day-to-day lives, just as it will be at the vanguard of science and enterprise.
