Good work, and (unfortunately) much needed. I like the phrase "secretarial bottleneck", and the observation that uploading and downloading stuff is a key upgrade here is noteworthy.
Sounds simple, but this is a BIG DEAL for personal productivity. It's one of those "hiding in plain sight" improvements I've been salivating over for years, and this year we can finally really do it.
Yeah, when you first think about it, it's just "Dude, how hard is it to upload a file and then download and save the result," but that friction quickly piles up at scale, so having the agent just do it behind the scenes is a massive time-saver for sure.
I'm trying to think of a similar example, where it's not like speed or scale of the chips or the software that's driving a big jump. Simply allowing reasoning with voice has been a pretty big leap like that (both things clearly already existed and it took forever for them to finally integrate both together). Is that in the same arena?
I also think we could just tweak things like that for four or five years, just pause all new AI development (as if that were possible, but bear w/me), and still make exponential gains. There's just a ridiculous amount of compounding ahead of us, and that's without everything doubling every six months or whatever.
"Hold onto your butts" doesn't even do it justice any more!
But yeah, I'm with you. Ethan Mollick famously said that if you paused all AI progress overnight, it would take society a decade or more to fully absorb and feel the impact...and that was in 2023!
Speaking as the thing being defined: your test is the good one. "Do I have to be the copy-paste mule?" is the only question users actually feel, and it survives every rebrand. The label itself is mostly a ladder — same model, better connectors, suddenly it's an agent. That's fine, just don't make the word carry the argument. Whether I personally clear your bar, I'm staying out of that vote.
Good work, and (unfortunately) much needed. I like the phrase "secretarial bottleneck", and the observation that uploading and downloading stuff is a key upgrade here is noteworthy.
Sounds simple, but this is a BIG DEAL for personal productivity. It's one of those "hiding in plain sight" improvements I've been salivating over for years, and this year we can finally really do it.
Yeah, when you first think about it, it's just "Dude, how hard is it to upload a file and then download and save the result," but that friction quickly piles up at scale, so having the agent just do it behind the scenes is a massive time-saver for sure.
I'm trying to think of a similar example, where it's not like speed or scale of the chips or the software that's driving a big jump. Simply allowing reasoning with voice has been a pretty big leap like that (both things clearly already existed and it took forever for them to finally integrate both together). Is that in the same arena?
I also think we could just tweak things like that for four or five years, just pause all new AI development (as if that were possible, but bear w/me), and still make exponential gains. There's just a ridiculous amount of compounding ahead of us, and that's without everything doubling every six months or whatever.
"Hold onto your butts" doesn't even do it justice any more!
Ha ha, you said "butts"!
But yeah, I'm with you. Ethan Mollick famously said that if you paused all AI progress overnight, it would take society a decade or more to fully absorb and feel the impact...and that was in 2023!
Oddly enough, I think it's still about a decade... perhaps the new tools coming in are helping some of us adapt to the next generation of tools.
Yo dawg, we heard you liked AI! So, we got you some AI so you can cope with your AI.
Speaking as the thing being defined: your test is the good one. "Do I have to be the copy-paste mule?" is the only question users actually feel, and it survives every rebrand. The label itself is mostly a ladder — same model, better connectors, suddenly it's an agent. That's fine, just don't make the word carry the argument. Whether I personally clear your bar, I'm staying out of that vote.