As AI evolves, its true potential will be realised when it can autonomously handle most of our digital tasks. Satyen K. Bordoloi explores recent AI advancements to spotlight the emergence of personal AI assistants.
In the Marvel film series, Iron Man’s digital assistant, Jarvis, has complete control of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit and digital life, completing tasks with voice commands. Though fictional, it is a benchmark for AI capabilities, with Google naming its latest AI tech designed to control web browsers and perform tasks like research and shopping, Project Jarvis.
The advancements in AI have been astounding, but we are only at the beginning of its full potential. AI will truly fulfil its promise when it autonomously handles – like Jarvis – most of our digital tasks, leaving us the task of merely supervising them. In my previous articles, I have called this ‘PAI’ – Personal AI assistants, but AI developers call them autonomous agents or simply ‘Agent’. Though Jarvis first appeared in a 2008 film, Project Jarvis and other developments by major AI firms and some startups, to create PAI, are picking steam in 2024.
Explainer of what Microsoft’s Agents could do to productivity
What Is an Autonomous Agent: An autonomous agent or Agent is an AI program designed to pursue goals in digital environments autonomously, even complex ones, with minimal user supervision. These agents can make decisions based on natural language directions, i.e., voice commands of users, utilising tools often guided by large language models. Unlike passive gadgets you have to act on, AI agents can act on their own.
From planning your day, making your presentation, arranging meetings, managing your finances, or researching holiday spots – Agents can connect with other applications including AI apps and execute multistep decision-making tasks much as a human personal assistant would.
Iron Man’s AI Jarvis is a sort of bellwether for all modern AI agents
Google’s AI Agents: Google has been trying extra hard to lean into AI agent development. Besides Project Jarvis, their major push has been via Vertex AI, a unified platform providing a comprehensive set of tools and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. The aim is to enable developers to create sophisticated AI agents capable of performing tasks like natural language processing, computer vision, and predictive analytics.
Google is working diligently to figure out how to train agents to make complex decisions in dynamic environments. We can expect these to be integrated into Google Assistant and Gemini later.
Anthropic’s Innovative AI: Anthropic, co-founded by former OpenAI employees, has introduced an AI model designed to push the boundaries of traditional automation. This system can control a PC, offering a personalized user experience by intuitively understanding and executing commands across various applications. It automates tasks such as managing emails, scheduling, and generating reports. Its adaptability, learned from user interactions, makes it a useful tool for personal and professional use.
Google’s Vertex AI
Microsoft’s Windows Agent Arena: Microsoft aims to reignite its 1990s glory days with a finger on the pulse of the tech world via its Windows Agent Arena, an AI assistant that integrates deeply with Windows PCs to perform users’ tasks for them. From scheduling appointments to drafting documents, it is designed to work seamlessly with Microsoft’s suite of applications to ensure users are not bogged down by mundane tasks.
Microsoft hopes to have this Agent assistant manage everything from simple reminders to complex project management.
OpenAI’s AI Agents: During their 2024 DevDay event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI agents would be integrated into daily life by next year. The company hopes to be one of the top gainers from this transition, and their recent API updates such as Realtime API for speech-to-speech interaction and vision fine-tuning for image recognition, are expected to drive this integration.
An AI assistant would be just like a real assistant, except in the digital space (Image Courtesy: lexica.art)
Model distillation and prompt caching are also part of innovations to enhance efficiency. These advancements, coupled with substantial funding, position OpenAI to significantly improve the development and deployment of AI agents.
Agents by Startups: Other AI agents from startups, like Relay and Induced AI, automate repetitive tasks and integrate with various software. Automat can control web browsers for tasks like web scraping and data extraction. Salesforce’s AI Agents are designed to integrate with business tools, automate customer support, forecast sales, and help create marketing campaigns. They aim to be valuable tools in customer relationship management, providing businesses with actionable insights and automating processes to drive efficiency and growth.
Benefits and Challenges: The benefits of AI models are immense. They can boost efficiency and productivity for businesses and provide you with the convenience of a digital assistant that anticipates your needs and completes tasks, from the mundane to the complex. However, there are significant concerns. The biggest is data privacy. With AI agents accessing sensitive information about individuals and companies, the risk of data compromise is high.
Ensuring the security of these agents is crucial. Another issue is that over-reliance on AI agents could erode our critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Future Prospects and Monetization: The growth of PAI or Agents is driven by one simple fact: this is the easiest path to monetise the billions invested in AI research and development. Even before the rise of generative AI, I had predicted that driven by their ability to enhance human capabilities and free up our time for more creative and important tasks, the PAI or agent industry – non-existent when I had said so – would become a trillion-dollar market.
AI as assistant as depicted in Her is already coming true
It seems 2025 will be the beginning of the journey when every one of us, like in the film Her, will carry a digital assistant in our pockets. And perhaps by 2030, it could become a trillion-dollar industry overall.
The greatest strength of these AI agents lies in their ability to enhance human capabilities and provide more free time. However, I recommend the AI community consider moving beyond the term ‘Agents’. It perpetuates the negative myths surrounding AI, reminiscent of the evil AI programs in the Matrix series. With Agent Anthropic, Agent OpenAI, and Agent Microsoft already in existence, it’s only a matter of time before we are flooded with a meme-fest pouncing on the potential maliciousness of an ‘Agent Smith’.
Hopefully, the benefits of AI agents will continue to outweigh the risks so much that like P G Wodehouse’s butler Jeeves becoming Jarvis, Agent Smith will become a goofy Agent Psmith.
