Need to attend a meeting, order groceries or book a flight? There's an 'AI agent' for that

As big tech developers race to roll out the next generation of artificial intelligence, some people are already enlisting an army of AI helpers to check off their daily to-do lists.

As big tech developers race to roll out the next generation of artificial intelligence, some people are already enlisting an army of AI helpers to check off their daily to-do lists.

These are called agents: AI systems that automatically come up with a plan and execute it at your request. They can take the form of a shopping assistant, a video gaming coach or even a fully self-driving car.

“This notion that we will have our own personalized assistant, if you will, is one way to think about it,” Tammy Madsen, professor of strategy & innovation at Santa Clara University, said about the rise of these specialized virtual workers.

Last month, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, introduced an AI agent called Operator that it advertised as capable of using the web to complete tasks like filling out forms and ordering groceries for a certain recipe. In a demo of the agent, OpenAI showed Operator booking a dinner reservation, purchasing tickets to a basketball game and ordering pizzas, each time following the user’s specific preferences.

Google on Wednesday also announced the launch of an AI co-scientist, which the company described as a “virtual scientific collaborator” made up of multiple AI agents.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ai-agent-explainer-rcna193048

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