OpenAI Announces the ChatGPT Agent: Everything You Need to Know

In this episode, we explore OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent, an AI assistant designed to enhance productivity by automating daily tasks. 

We react to its features and discuss its potential impact on finance and e-commerce, as well as the workforce. Tune in for insights into AI's capabilities and ethical implications, and join us next week as we examine the future of AI browsers!

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro
1:25 Initial Reactions to the Agent
4:04 Testing the Agent's Capabilities
7:09 User Experience with the Agent
9:16 Enhancements and Limitations
11:50 Future of AI and Agents
14:26 Financial Applications of the Agent
15:52 Everyday Use Cases for the Agent
19:53 Impact on Retail and Ecommerce
22:47 Security Concerns with AI Agents
25:23 The Workforce Transformation
28:03 Conclusion and Future Outlook

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RESOURCES

Josh: https://x.com/Josh_Kale

Ejaaz:https://x.com/cryptopunk7213

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Creators and Guests

Host

Josh Kale

What is Limitless Podcast?

Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI

Josh:
So Ejaz you're wealthy you've just won the

Josh:
lotto you have all this money what's one of the first things you

Josh:
do and I know you're probably going to say a lot of answers but there's one particular answer

Josh:
that I want you to say which is you're going to get yourself an assistant right

Josh:
to kind of help you do all the things that you don't like to do they're going

Josh:
to manage your calendar they're going to order your groceries they're going

Josh:
to book your flights they're going to take care of all the essential annoyances

Josh:
that you just don't want to deal with.

Josh:
Now, what's cool about the news from this week is that OpenAI has released something

Josh:
that essentially commoditizes that part of wealth.

Josh:
It gives you an assistant that allows you to do all of these tedious things

Josh:
that you normally don't like to do, but only for the cost of $20 a month.

Josh:
And it's a product called Agent.

Josh:
And here will show up the announcement post that they shared.

Josh:
And what's really interesting about agent is it kind of builds

Josh:
upon a lot of other things that openai has been building right

Josh:
they have a browser feature they have a deep research feature

Josh:
but they haven't created a fully comprehensive assistant

Josh:
and that is what i'm assuming openai is

Josh:
trying to do with their agent feature now the news dropped last week i was watching

Josh:
the live stream ijaz we were we were kind of chatting throughout the whole thing

Josh:
you were slightly underwhelmed because it didn't seem as cool as you wanted

Josh:
i was more like in awe at the user interface i thought it just looked very are

Josh:
you pretty more than anything else?

Josh:
And we're kind of seeing on screen the announcement video.

Josh:
What were your first takes when you saw this, the agent product from OpenAI?

Ejaaz:
OK, so we were both watching that live stream at the same time,

Ejaaz:
and we were sharing our thoughts.

Ejaaz:
Do you remember that one sentence that I had for you, Josh, which was, if this is another,

Ejaaz:
Google Drive connector, another agent that claims to do a ton of things and

Ejaaz:
really it just kind of connects to your Google Drive, I'm going to be really mad.

Ejaaz:
And what are we looking at on our screens right now, Josh? Tell me what we're looking at.

Josh:
That's so funny because I was reading your message. You just sent this about

Josh:
the first minute of the presentation and maybe 10 minutes later,

Josh:
they showed the exact connection that he was describing, which is a Google Drive

Josh:
connector. And what does that mean for the people who aren't sure why that's

Josh:
not super exciting to you? Why is that annoying?

Ejaaz:
So everyone uses email, right? And the most popular email is probably Gmail.

Ejaaz:
And it comes with this suite of different products, right? You've got Google

Ejaaz:
Docs where people write up documents at different company jobs.

Ejaaz:
You've got Google Meet, people do video conferencing. It's a whole thing, right?

Ejaaz:
And when agents started becoming popular, Josh, do you remember one of the main

Ejaaz:
claims to fame was that you could now use AI in your Google account,

Ejaaz:
which means that it kind of becomes chat GPT,

Ejaaz:
but it can reference all your documents, it understands all your Excel sheets,

Ejaaz:
your emails, it writes emails for you, whatever, right?

Ejaaz:
But it ended up being more for PR purposes than what the agent actually did.

Ejaaz:
When you actually tried some of these agents, all it kind of did was,

Ejaaz:
it felt like a very friction filled process very fragmented still josh i still

Ejaaz:
had to tell the ai no i meant i want you to reference this document or i want

Ejaaz:
you to talk about this particular thing and i just ended up doing it all myself

Ejaaz:
so i kind of have a shaded experience with using agents so when i saw this on

Ejaaz:
the live stream i was like oh.

Josh:
God is this

Ejaaz:
The same thing.

Josh:
And is it the same thing? Do you feel it's the same thing? Or is this a slight

Josh:
enhancement? Because it appears to me like it's different. This time it is a little bit different.

Ejaaz:
Okay, I will humor you. It actually, this time actually is a bit different.

Ejaaz:
So you mentioned earlier, Josh, that this is a combination of their operator

Ejaaz:
agent, which is, if I'm not mistaken, a computer use agent, right?

Ejaaz:
So if you imagine it is an AI that can look at your desktop or your laptop screen

Ejaaz:
the same way that I'm looking at it right now, and it can scroll with its own

Ejaaz:
cursor, it can open up new tabs, it can open up documents,

Ejaaz:
it can type your keyboard virtually and write a message, right?

Ejaaz:
And it combines this feature with something called deep research,

Ejaaz:
which you and I have spoken about a lot on this show, Josh, which is kind of

Ejaaz:
like a PhD level researcher for whatever requests that you might have.

Ejaaz:
So in theory, that sounded really good.

Ejaaz:
Well, we just got access to this.

Ejaaz:
I'm just gonna pull up the suite so that people have more context here,

Ejaaz:
because I'm sure a lot of our listeners are kind of like asking, you know

Ejaaz:
can i use this right now the feature just rolled

Ejaaz:
out to all pro users so all anyone that's

Ejaaz:
on the gpt pro plan will get access to this and so i

Ejaaz:
was playing around with this for the last couple of days josh and

Ejaaz:
to answer your question yes it is actually quite useful i kind of use some of

Ejaaz:
the presented prompts so you know kind of like when you haven't typed anything

Ejaaz:
yet they kind of suggest things that you have to type josh and i got it to organize

Ejaaz:
bouquet of flowers to be delivered to my apartment for my girlfriend.

Ejaaz:
And that's all I asked her to do. I was like, you know, off you go.

Ejaaz:
This is not something I want to spend my time doing. So you go do it for me, right?

Ejaaz:
Exactly, right? And so I set it. And then I'll tell you my firsthand experience,

Ejaaz:
Josh, which is kind of funny.

Ejaaz:
I just stared at the screen and I watched it create this virtual browser.

Ejaaz:
So for those of you who are listening to the audio here, kind of imagine a pop-up

Ejaaz:
appearing and it's like a mini desktop.

Ejaaz:
But all the actions, all the movements, all the screen grabbing and all that

Ejaaz:
kind of stuff is completely autonomous.

Ejaaz:
You're just watching the AI do its thing. So it opened up a browser,

Ejaaz:
Josh, and it started scrolling through different links from Google,

Ejaaz:
from GPT, flower websites in my local area.

Ejaaz:
It started using my location tracker to figure out where I was so it could figure

Ejaaz:
out kind of like my vague general address and then figure out what flower shops

Ejaaz:
were near me. It then kind of like started passing through a bunch of different

Ejaaz:
bouquet flowers, all that kind of stuff.

Ejaaz:
Kind of figuring out what's seasonal and what's not, what's within kind of a

Ejaaz:
reasonable price point.

Ejaaz:
And then it gave me a bunch of suggestions. And it said, hey,

Ejaaz:
okay, these are some pretty good suggestions that I've got for you,

Ejaaz:
but I kind of want to see whether I'm on track, whether I'm kind of hitting your vibe.

Ejaaz:
Can you give me some more information to let me know?

Ejaaz:
And so what I basically did, Josh, was I reviewed what it had for me.

Ejaaz:
I scrolled through some of the examples that I had and I said,

Ejaaz:
yeah, I actually kind of like this.

Ejaaz:
And options one and four are kind of like really my vibe.

Ejaaz:
And it said, okay, say no more. And it went away and it started like loading

Ejaaz:
up the checkout sites and all that.

Ejaaz:
And I could see the way it thought Josh, which was like one of my biggest takeaways

Ejaaz:
was it kind of gave me comfort being able to watch it do its own thing.

Ejaaz:
So it took about 10 minutes in this entire process. And by the end of it,

Ejaaz:
I had a pretty good idea of which bouquet I wanted.

Ejaaz:
And it just needed me to fill out some wallet details and off I went.

Ejaaz:
So my initial take was, you've just saved me a lot of time. You did that in

Ejaaz:
10 minutes where I could have just technically looked away from the screen and

Ejaaz:
got on with my own thing, right? And then come back to it.

Ejaaz:
The other takeaway that I have, and I'm going to take the other side of this,

Ejaaz:
right? Is it still required me to do things, Josh.

Ejaaz:
It didn't know me entirely. And maybe I'm being too hard on the AI,

Ejaaz:
but ideally I want an AI agent that just kind of like knows what I want and

Ejaaz:
gets it done for me, right?

Ejaaz:
And like has access to my wallet and pays for me.

Ejaaz:
We're not quite there yet, but this is a noticeable step change from what we had before.

Josh:
Okay, so good, not great. It'll get you most of the way there,

Josh:
but it won't quite finish the entire thing.

Josh:
And it was interesting hearing the process because during the stream,

Josh:
I was listening to how it works. And you described the combination between operator

Josh:
and deep research, how they're complimentary.

Josh:
I kind of want to unpack that a little bit because operator was the browser-based

Josh:
feature. can control a browser.

Josh:
So now you have this tool that can control a browser, but it can't really read

Josh:
long articles. It's not good at reading long articles. It doesn't have a lot of context.

Josh:
It's not that good at things that deep research was good at.

Josh:
Deep research is good at reading huge amounts of information,

Josh:
compressing it down, coming up with links, and feeding that information back to the browser.

Josh:
So we have this very complementary thing where deep research can't interact

Josh:
with visual web pages, but it can understand a lot of context.

Josh:
An operator can interact with visuals, but it doesn't have the ability to read a lot.

Josh:
And that creates this complementary tool set that we're seeing on screen right

Josh:
now, which is basically what OpenAd calls the agent.

Josh:
It's given a tool set. So the agent spins up a virtual machine.

Josh:
So you can imagine when you prompt in a query, it created this virtual computer

Josh:
that started talking through how to get the bouquet of flowers.

Josh:
It has a text-based browser tool, it has an image-based browser tool,

Josh:
and there's access to its own terminal to create complementary things.

Josh:
So let's say you were for example doing a spreadsheet and you wanted to see

Josh:
what the costs of all the bouquet of flowers are throughout the neighborhood.

Josh:
It can actually do that because it has all these complementary tool sets.

Josh:
So while I can do all of this,

Josh:
Well, it's not completely finished, like you said, you still have to kind of nudge it through.

Josh:
So an example that they used in the live stream was trying to get a wedding outfit for a wedding.

Josh:
And it'll get you kind of close, but then it doesn't quite know the sizing.

Josh:
It doesn't quite know your style preferences.

Josh:
And there's more context that it needs

Ejaaz:
To complete this. It's lacking a bit of context, right? Yeah, exactly.

Josh:
Yes, it's lacking the context and it's lacking the ability to click pay.

Josh:
So we're seeing here in the example, it's stuck on the pay screen because it

Josh:
doesn't have your credit card information and they just don't have that capability stored yet.

Josh:
So I would imagine this is probably just, I mean, this is version one.

Josh:
It will get better. It will have the context. It will get your credit card info.

Josh:
One of the things I loved, and you described this briefly, is when it loads

Josh:
up this browser window, you can actually replay it.

Josh:
So Ejaz, you were at your browser for 10 minutes kind of watching it do its thing.

Josh:
But in the case that you stepped away and you left you could

Josh:
come back and you could actually re-watch all the steps that

Josh:
it took as if you were watching a youtube video which is something that i really

Josh:
liked a lot about this i think of all the things that i liked the most it was

Josh:
the interface it was very pretty it was very easy to understand and it's really

Josh:
funny the example they they were able to just kind of pan through like it was

Josh:
a youtube video see where it made the searches see what it was looking for walk

Josh:
through that step process to see how exactly it arrived at the answer.

Josh:
And that was pretty neat. So, I mean, I haven't gotten a chance to try yet.

Josh:
My account still does not have enabled.

Josh:
Please give it to me. But based on your experience, it seems like it's good, not great.

Josh:
And I think that's a step in the right direction because we went from pretty

Josh:
mediocre to good. And that's a big jump in the right direction. Yeah.

Ejaaz:
So let me unpack my thoughts a little more for you, Josh. Basically,

Ejaaz:
I think it's good for people that have high agency.

Ejaaz:
And what I mean by that is people who know what exactly they need to get done and, you know,

Ejaaz:
maybe what they need to get done requires general access to a browser or and

Ejaaz:
a few different tools will get a ton of value out of this agent product.

Ejaaz:
I'm not saying it's useless. It's definitely way more useful than any other

Ejaaz:
agent that's been released before.

Ejaaz:
For the general public, who is so used to, I feel like at this point,

Ejaaz:
Josh, magic when it comes to the internet.

Ejaaz:
It's like, you know, when you open up an app and you're like,

Ejaaz:
whoa, like snaps of photos that disappear after six seconds.

Ejaaz:
That's so novel, right? Back in the day when Snapchat was created.

Ejaaz:
You know, they want like that kind of like easy to understand kind of like basic

Ejaaz:
level thinking. I don't need to think too much. It just wows me.

Ejaaz:
We're not there yet with agents. But I have a feeling that when you combine

Ejaaz:
agent with deep research as they did today, but with the context of memory,

Ejaaz:
which as you and I have spoken about many times,

Ejaaz:
and that OpenAI has the kind of like forefront leadership on,

Ejaaz:
when you combine all those three things together, then you're going to see that

Ejaaz:
magical experience where all you have to do, well, maybe you don't even have to prompt it, Josh.

Ejaaz:
Maybe you just kind of open your screen and the agent is like,

Ejaaz:
hey, I kind of ordered your coffee for you already.

Ejaaz:
It's actually outside the Korea. I've been tracking him is arriving and I've

Ejaaz:
like ordered your Tesla robo taxi to arrive.

Ejaaz:
So, you know, you'll be ready to go and leave at 730 a.m. or whatever it is to go to the office.

Ejaaz:
That's when people are going to start being like.

Ejaaz:
I will pay hundreds of dollars for this thing. And I won't even think twice.

Josh:
Yes. So we have great examples of people using this so far.

Josh:
I see you have one pulled up right here. I want you to walk me through how you

Josh:
can actually use this thing. Because

Josh:
a lot of these things are kind of constrained by your own creativity.

Josh:
I do a lot of stuff, but I'm not quite sure what I'm able to optimize for.

Josh:
So what are some people using this to optimize for currently?

Ejaaz:
So in this example, this person is using it to shop, which isn't exactly something that I can relate to.

Ejaaz:
I don't do a lot of online shopping, but i have a girlfriend who does

Ejaaz:
and i know that there are many different occasions that she

Ejaaz:
needs to kind of cater and figure out what to buy for and there's so

Ejaaz:
many sites that she needs to browse so in this example over here um you can

Ejaaz:
see like you know she puts in this problem we pause it she goes find a beige

Ejaaz:
trench coat for under 500 any website is fine must be under 500 including shipping

Ejaaz:
must have a belt and double-breasted buttons optional to have a hood but must be detachable,

Ejaaz:
basically all these different specificities that she needs for this comic, right?

Ejaaz:
And kind of reading this kind of gives me a little anxiety because I'm like,

Ejaaz:
oh my god, like I do not have the energy to search for something like this myself.

Ejaaz:
And you see the agent responding being like, understood, I'll start searching

Ejaaz:
for the beige coat under 500 bucks, and off we go, right?

Ejaaz:
So that's happening. It's doing its own desktop thing. And we see it kind of

Ejaaz:
unfolding. It's going through Amazon.

Ejaaz:
It's kind of like going through a bunch of different options,

Ejaaz:
looking at different colors, making sure it fits all the different criteria.

Ejaaz:
And in the meantime, she's timing up another prompt and she's running up another prompt.

Ejaaz:
So she's basically running like a bunch of different prompts for like her own chat GPT discussions.

Ejaaz:
And what she's demonstrating here is she can go back and forth between windows, Josh.

Ejaaz:
And she can like basically multiply her time and effort over a ton of different

Ejaaz:
tasks while she has this agent doing it for her in the background.

Ejaaz:
And if we get to the end of it...

Ejaaz:
As we see over here, we see that it's pulled up a bunch of options.

Ejaaz:
I think it's primarily used Amazon as its main kind of retailer.

Ejaaz:
And then she ends up kind of like making a decision around what kind of coat that she wants to buy.

Ejaaz:
So I thought that was like a really generally accessible or publicly accessible

Ejaaz:
example that anyone can get into.

Ejaaz:
I thought this was pretty fun. So this is something that like really relates

Ejaaz:
to me, right? I'm like getting old.

Ejaaz:
I'm like, okay, I need to, okay, I'm not that old. But like I'm starting to

Ejaaz:
think about major financial decisions, right? I'm like, can I afford a house

Ejaaz:
or am I going to be eternally renting for the rest of my life? Stuff like that.

Ejaaz:
So I'm like, okay, what do I do with my finances? I don't even know the first

Ejaaz:
place to consider or look into.

Ejaaz:
And this demo basically says that it took 20 minutes for this agent to run a

Ejaaz:
task to figure out what a healthy retirement plan might look like or financial

Ejaaz:
plan might look like for this particular user that is demonstrating this example.

Ejaaz:
And what I found really interesting here, and I'm highlighting it on this tweet,

Ejaaz:
is within 20 minutes, it found local tax laws in Vancouver, which is where this guy must be based.

Ejaaz:
It analyzed average monthly spend rates. It calculated savings needed to retire at 30 years old.

Ejaaz:
It researched optimal investment allocations. It found taxed optimized strategies.

Ejaaz:
It built multiple retirement scenarios.

Ejaaz:
And then it created a downloadable presentation with all the results, Josh.

Ejaaz:
This would have cost me $5,000 from a financial advisor and taken weeks.

Ejaaz:
But here I have ChatGPT doing this all for whatever, $50, $100 subscription.

Ejaaz:
And I'm going to bring up the video here where we basically see it kind of go

Ejaaz:
through its thought process and then create a final finished deck,

Ejaaz:
which you see on your screens right now.

Ejaaz:
It looks pretty rudimentary, doesn't it, Josh? Let's be honest.

Josh:
It looks kind of like a... I wouldn't give it a passing grade in terms of style,

Josh:
but perhaps in terms of the actual content. Very impressive.

Ejaaz:
Very impressive. Very impressive.

Josh:
And this third example that we have is pretty funny because just before we started

Josh:
recording, EJs and I were going through what we were going to order for lunch.

Josh:
And it was this kind of intensive process.

Josh:
We were reading off the menu items and choosing what we liked.

Josh:
And it took a few minutes. And this one is a little bit different.

Josh:
This one, the prompt was to order a roast dinner, which I think is very fitting

Josh:
for you to describe EJs because I'm not quite sure what a roast dinner is.

Josh:
This seems like a British thing.

Ejaaz:
It's a Sunday meal, Josh, where the family comes together. It's either roast

Ejaaz:
chicken, roast lamb or roast beef and it is a lengthy process all right and

Ejaaz:
trust me i've watched my mom do it a million times.

Josh:
Well according to this example it does not have to

Josh:
be as lengthy as you imagine it used to be

Josh:
what i'm seeing this agent do is it's actually it's going through

Josh:
a grocery list it's choosing the chicken it's scheduling a delivery time

Josh:
and it's giving you the the prompts in which you would

Josh:
need to just finish filling it out so it's like hey what are the login details what

Josh:
are the credit card information what time do you want delivered but it's doing

Josh:
everything and it's amazing you're watching it click the browser it is going

Josh:
through the thinking it is selecting all the things that you want really impressive

Josh:
stuff so in this case like that solves you your your roast dinner problem where

Josh:
you don't have to worry about it anymore you set this up once it knows your

Josh:
preferences and then you just type in the prompt when you're ready to go and

Josh:
it will place another order

Ejaaz:
You know what's really impressive about this, Josh? I've been on this website,

Ejaaz:
this exact website before actually, Tesco, when I was a university kid.

Ejaaz:
And I remember doing bulk orders because I had like no money back then.

Ejaaz:
So I was like, any kind of like bundle deal, I'll order in bulk and then like

Ejaaz:
store it in the freezer or whatever.

Ejaaz:
There are so many products. It's like going to Costco or whatever.

Ejaaz:
It's Costco here, right? Where it's like a bulk ordering thing. and

Ejaaz:
you know you just spend millions of hours just staring in

Ejaaz:
the eyes being like i don't know what i need do i need this many toilet

Ejaaz:
roll i have no idea this just like abstracts all

Ejaaz:
of that away from you and i just know that there are a ton of people where this

Ejaaz:
would be kind of like super useful for right the other thing was that kind of

Ejaaz:
like popped into my mind is like how relevant does this make like supermarket

Ejaaz:
websites these days right or just like general retailers in general Like,

Ejaaz:
do the Amazons and Tescos, in this example, of the world need to now try and

Ejaaz:
cater to these agents, Josh? Like, how are you thinking about that?

Josh:
Yeah, I think the answer is yes. I think directionally the answer is yes for

Josh:
things much further than just grocery stores.

Josh:
Where if you're building a

Josh:
website, you kind of want a version of your website to be readable by AIs.

Josh:
A lot of websites are visually complex. They have a lot of visual.

Josh:
Well, they're meant to be aesthetically pleasing, but they're not meant to serve

Josh:
data in the most optimized way.

Josh:
So what I've been seeing with a lot of developers they've started doing is they've

Josh:
actually created a .md file, which is a markdown file that just has the raw

Josh:
text data of the website.

Josh:
No way. So when an agent is scraping...

Josh:
No images at all, just the raw text data. Because when an AI is scraping a website,

Josh:
all it wants is the tokens.

Josh:
It doesn't care for the visuals. It can't see in most cases.

Josh:
So the most optimal way of serving these models is just by allowing the robot

Josh:
to come and read your website as it wants to.

Josh:
And I think a similar thing is probably going to happen with delivery,

Josh:
with groceries, with everything is just kind of creating a dual experience, this split experience.

Josh:
There's an experience you build for the human, and then there's an experience

Josh:
you build for the AI model.

Josh:
And the ai model is going to be really boring and plain it's

Josh:
just going to be a massive block of text that has

Josh:
no spacing no prompts it's just text but

Josh:
that's really all the ai model wants it ingests the tokens it sorts them and

Josh:
it pops new ones out and i think this is probably a trend we're going to be

Josh:
seeing with a lot of things is is the user interface the visual element of it

Josh:
is going to matter less and less and i can't talk about this without thinking

Josh:
about an episode that we're going to be filming soon,

Josh:
which is about browsers and AI browsers in general, and how we kind of interact with these things.

Josh:
Because it's becoming more and more clear that the future of engaging with the

Josh:
internet will be requesting something from it and expecting to be delivered

Josh:
that thing without needing to search and go through all the tedious efforts

Josh:
of actively going to the website,

Josh:
searching through the million different SKUs that they have on Tesco, choosing what you want.

Josh:
You could just say, hey, I have this grocery list or hey, I want to make this

Josh:
for dinner. just go find the stuff for me and just make sure it shows about my doorstep by 6 p.m.

Josh:
And that is a really cool trend that I think we are starting to see and we're

Josh:
going to see more as more tools like this get rolled out.

Ejaaz:
I can't help but think that this is going to completely disrupt the advertising industry, Josh.

Ejaaz:
Isn't that like the main way that all these internet companies make all their money?

Ejaaz:
YouTube, Google on search ad revenue, Meta on advertising on all their news

Ejaaz:
feeds and all that kind of stuff. It's advertisers, right?

Ejaaz:
And now I'm trying to think, how do you prove that your advert has made an impression

Ejaaz:
on an artificial intelligent agent, right?

Ejaaz:
To your point, you go from making flashy ads, which were designed for human

Ejaaz:
eyes to see and walk at, to agents that are just reading a bunch of .md text

Ejaaz:
files, as you put it, right?

Ejaaz:
Which is kind of like insane to think about.

Ejaaz:
The other thing that I'm thinking about is I think services are going to look

Ejaaz:
very different now, Josh, right?

Ejaaz:
It's going to become less human-like. So we're going to, you know,

Ejaaz:
we're not naturally going to go on websites.

Ejaaz:
And I kind of have a comment on your browser, a topic that you mentioned.

Ejaaz:
I kind of think of it as like an intermediary step, right?

Ejaaz:
Almost like it's kind of like trying to bridge the gap between humans and AI.

Ejaaz:
Oh, we're used to browsers, scrolling browsers.

Ejaaz:
So, you know, let's add a few AI features to these browsers.

Ejaaz:
And I'm really excited to do that episode.

Ejaaz:
But then ultimately, we're going to

Ejaaz:
end up in this world where it's just advertisers trying to pitch agents.

Ejaaz:
Your maybe your own personal agent to sell something to you and i wonder whether

Ejaaz:
it skews incentives in different ways right maybe you can pay the agent shill

Ejaaz:
a certain product to the individual i wonder how all of that ends up mapping

Ejaaz:
out it's a weird thing to think.

Josh:
About i would actually love to have a specialist on advertising on the show

Josh:
to talk about this that just knows more about it than we do because the model

Josh:
is already starting to break we've seen it a lot with ad blockers now being

Josh:
built into browsers a lot of companies are kind of optimizing out of displaying ads, so

Josh:
On YouTube, a lot of people will just pay for their premium service to not even have to deal with it.

Josh:
So there's this trend towards avoiding ads.

Josh:
Now that these agents are browsing the website, do they insert the ads into

Josh:
the markdown files of the website and hope that they get served?

Josh:
Is the agent going to be able to filter out from there? Because that's this

Josh:
thing called injection poisoning, right?

Josh:
Where you kind of inject these things into the words that it's reading to give it commands.

Josh:
And that was actually part of the presentation that OpenAI had was about the

Josh:
security and defensiveness of these agents.

Josh:
Because when you have an agent that is equipped with your credit card information,

Josh:
all of your personal information, everything about you, and it has read and

Josh:
write ability on the open internet,

Josh:
well, you kind of want to make sure the agent is not giving this stuff up and

Josh:
telling a malicious actor what your address is, what your credit card information

Josh:
is, what all your preferences are.

Josh:
So there's the second side of this conversation, which

Josh:
is the security of allowing an agent to go

Josh:
out into the wild with your entire profile in its

Josh:
brain in the hopes that some malicious actor

Josh:
can't can't prompt inject and create this malicious intention that serves up

Josh:
the information to a website that they're just that's not real there's there's

Josh:
this whole defensible side of this argument to be had also it seems like they're

Josh:
doing a lot of work to prevent this but i guess we'll see as time goes on how it actually plays out

Ejaaz:
Okay, so, so far we've spoken about retail consumption of these agents,

Ejaaz:
Josh. We've spoken about the security.

Ejaaz:
One thing that we haven't covered is kind of like the workforce and the enterprise world, right?

Ejaaz:
Presumably, right, if you can connect an agent to, you know,

Ejaaz:
very neatly use your Google Drive, your Slack, your LinkedIn,

Ejaaz:
your Salesforce CRM, what are you doing from nine to five every day, right?

Ejaaz:
I pulled up this demo here, Josh. I don't know if you can see it.

Ejaaz:
But it's this demo that shows someone using the GPT agent to basically make

Ejaaz:
personalized invite connections to a bunch of different people on LinkedIn.

Ejaaz:
And so it kind of sets the scenario with the prompt saying, like,

Ejaaz:
hey, I want you to basically reach out to individuals that have this kind of

Ejaaz:
a background, that have held this kind of role, that has this many years of

Ejaaz:
experience, and I want you to pitch them on A, B, and C, right?

Ejaaz:
And like throughout the demo, it kind of like goes through, personalizes each

Ejaaz:
request to each individual person.

Ejaaz:
And the first thought that I had in this, Josh, was if you're on the sales team

Ejaaz:
of some company, your job just got automated, dude.

Ejaaz:
Because a lot of the time you spend, if you're a recruitment person,

Ejaaz:
work for a recruitment firm and you're headhunting someone, 90% of their time

Ejaaz:
is spent on LinkedIn. I get a ton of these requests day in, day out, right?

Ejaaz:
And so I'm thinking, well, now your job can be completely automated and it could

Ejaaz:
probably do a much better job

Ejaaz:
and reach thousands of people that you reach over months within an hour,

Ejaaz:
within 20 minutes, within however long this video is, which is two minutes and

Ejaaz:
36 seconds. So I think that we're going to start to.

Josh:
See a lot of

Ejaaz:
These agents in work environments. I don't know if we're going to have as much insight into that.

Ejaaz:
It's going to be at the discretion of all these different companies as to what

Ejaaz:
they want to reveal to us. But that's something that we should keep our eyes on, Josh.

Ejaaz:
And, you know, I would love to get someone on the show,

Ejaaz:
knows about how it's transforming their own company right at a massive scale.

Josh:
Yeah it's the so there's there's two elements of

Josh:
this agent right it's like the personal unlock that we talked about at the top of the show

Josh:
where now it's this super assistant that you have to take care of all of your

Josh:
yes irons that you don't want to run all the things that are annoying and then

Josh:
you have the professional version of it where it can go and it can make sales

Josh:
funnels and sales calls and it could do a lot of the professional things it

Josh:
can query data it can create nice spreadsheets it can create google slide presentations

Josh:
and granted they don't look that pretty,

Josh:
but I mean, directionally, they're heading there and they will eventually get there.

Josh:
So it's this new trend that is really exciting because it's now here and it's

Josh:
accessible for $20 a month and you can actually go and try it and you could

Josh:
push those limitations, see

Josh:
where the outer bounds lie and see how it can mostly optimize your life.

Josh:
And then as we go, it'll just unlock more and more and more.

Josh:
It'll start taking down your credit card.

Josh:
It'll take down your whole preference stack and just become this supercharged agent.

Josh:
So I think that is OpenAI's agent feature. It's live. It is out right now.

Josh:
I'm hoping my account gets it soon because I really want to use it.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, dude. You know what? I am officially more optimistic than I was at the

Ejaaz:
start of this episode about this thing.

Ejaaz:
I think you've successfully, or rather we're both successfully convinced me,

Ejaaz:
that this is going to become a much larger thing.

Ejaaz:
And I'm just looking at the end of this demo here, Josh, like this screenshot

Ejaaz:
of like, you know, this virtual browser.

Ejaaz:
Even though it's so rudimentary and basic, I kind of get it.

Ejaaz:
Do you know what I mean? it's like running a simulation on my screen and like

Ejaaz:
having it like just set and forget on the top left of my screen and just letting it do its thing.

Ejaaz:
Or like if I'm doing work and I want to watch a stream of something,

Ejaaz:
I can have like a YouTube video like there on the corner of my screen.

Ejaaz:
It's kind of similar to that. So even just me saying that, it's behaviorally getting to me.

Ejaaz:
I'm understanding it subconsciously and I'm like, yeah, you know what?

Ejaaz:
This is going to be fun. So I'm bullish is what I'm saying.

Josh:
Great. I am bullish too. My hot take before we leave, I'm just going to mic

Josh:
drop this is I think the agent is much more impressive and much more important

Josh:
than the AI powered browser.

Josh:
I think the browsers are kind of dumb. The agent hops right over the browser.

Ejaaz:
That's probably where this goes. Dude, that was going to be you.

Ejaaz:
That's going to be my take on the future episode.

Josh:
I was going to show it. We're going to stop before we spoil it.

Josh:
The browser episode is coming soon. As soon as we get access to Comet,

Josh:
we want to use Comet from Complexity.

Josh:
We're working on getting access to it. Once we do, we will have a fully comprehensive

Josh:
episode covering AI browsers.

Josh:
But for now, that was OpenAI's agent feature.

Josh:
I would encourage you if you have a plus plan, which is the $20 a month plan.

Josh:
Go check it out. Give it a try. See where it can automate parts of your life.

Josh:
See where it improves it. See where it detracts from it. I don't know.

Josh:
I'd love to hear feedback. I'm sure both Ejaz and I would love to hear more

Josh:
examples of how you're using it.

Josh:
Because at the end of the day, the only real constraint on this is the creativity

Josh:
that you use when you're using it. So I hope you enjoyed it.

Josh:
That has been another episode. We will be back again soon talking about more

Josh:
AI news in the future. I'll talk to you guys soon.

Music:
Music